US Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, in a piece he wrote for the Huff Post talked about why the US justice system treats the country’s most marginalized groups in society very differently - even for nonviolent drug offenses.
“I can still remember the basement of the Willie T. Wright Apartments in Newark, where men of all ages packed together in a standing-room-only space. I was only 29 at the time, freshly elected to the Newark City Council and just a year out of law school, yet no classroom learning or political experience could prepare me for the situation at hand,” Booker wrote referring to a legal clinic his council staff was hosting. “I could see the pain on the faces of these men, many of whom had spent years struggling to reintegrate into society after being convicted of low-level, nonviolent drug crimes. Beaten down by circumstance, they were now looking to defy the odds in a fixed game.”
