Mass incarceration tops NAACP concerns

PRESIDENT OBAMA will visit Philly today to discuss criminal justice reform at the national NAACP convention, but attendees yesterday got a taste of what he might say from a parade of speakers who lamented mass incarceration and systemic problems rooted in America's racist history as the chief obstacles to true equality.

In a speech that was equal parts pep rally and impassioned call to action, NAACP President Cornell William Brooks told his listeners that their activism is more important than ever.

"We've seen more civil rights challenges [recently] than we have in quite some time," Brooks said, noting the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, the Charleston church massacre, last month's rough arrests at a Texas teen pool party and voter-fraud legislation that critics say disenfranchises voters of color.

He urged members to join him on a six-week, 860-mile NAACP march from Selma, Ala., to Washington, D.C., that's scheduled to start Aug. 1.

"Let us march on! Let us march on! Let us march on until victory is ours!" he shouted to a standing ovation.

Speaking of victory, another speaker, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., cheered Friday's "long-overdue" lowering of the Confederate flag on South Carolina's Capitol grounds, but added: "Removing a symbol of hatred cannot be the end of the conversation."

"Now, we may not be able to change people's hearts, but we do have a say in the laws that dictate their actions," added Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

Later, at a criminal justice reform panel, speakers complained that the U.S. leads the world in how many people it imprisons and length of sentence. Black men are disproportionately represented behind bars: The 2013 Sentencing Project study found that one in three black men will spend time in jail during their lifetimes, compared to one in 17 white men, if current incarceration trends continue.

Speakers David Singleton, an attorney who heads the Ohio Justice and Policy Center, and Brooklyn, N.Y., District Attorney Kenneth Thompson attributed those trends to poverty, poor health care, the lack of minority judges, prosecutors and lawyers, and other social issues that have existed for decades.

"If we want to connect the dots, slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration, that's easy to do: You just draw a line straight through," Singleton said.

"Too many prosecutors in this country have been far too complicit in allowing mass incarceration to happen," he added. "They're supposed to fight for justice. That doesn't just mean locking people up."

Reducing wrongful convictions will help ensure justice, Thompson said. Since he took office in January 2014, he's created a conviction-review unit that has reviewed 40 cases, finding 13 wrongful convictions, he said.

"If folks are disillusioned with their prosecutors, then you gotta get other prosecutors to take their place," Thompson said. "You got to have confidence in your prosecutor. Prosecutors, D.A.s, who are voted in, must be held accountable."

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