Sheila Bedi, clinical associate professor of law at the Northwestern University School of Law, brought a simple message to Ohio University last Thursday evening — end the current prison system and mass incarceration.
Sheila Bedi, a law professor at Northwestern University, wants to end mass incarceration. Photographer: Olivia Wallace
During her Martin Luther King, Jr., Day Week talk titled “Tearing Down the Walls: The Urgent Human Rights Crisis in U.S. Prisons and the Drive to End Mass Incarceration,” Bedi said the struggle for freedom is the struggle to end mass imprisonment.
A Detroit native, Bedi told the Baker University Center Ballroom audience that too many people are locked up for non-violent drug offenses, despite research that suggests most prisoners are not better off after they are released. She said one of the main challenges to ending mass incarceration is figuring out what to do with the prisoners who committed violent crimes.
Student Matthew Kinlow asks speaker Sheila Bedi a question, while Kaylin McBooth listens. Photographer: Olivia Wallace
Bedi shared some shocking figures about the U.S. criminal justice system. She said 2.3 million people are in jail, one in nine African Americans between ages 20 and 34 are locked up and despite African Americans being only 12 percent of all drug users, they make up 59 percent of people jailed on drug offenses.
“It’s as if the Civil Rights Movement skipped over the criminal justice system,” she said.
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