Wise insights from Prof Michelle Alexander: I highly recommend this article which describes how many criminal justice reforms - like house arrest and electronic monitoring - are simply new, high-tech versions of controlling poor people and people of color. A whole new, for-profit industry is emerging around alternatives to incarceration. While I certainly support efforts to think creatively about how to respond constructively to crime - rather than simply putting millions of people in cages - I am deeply concerned that, as a nation [USA], we seem to be more interested in finding high-tech means of managing, controlling, and monitoring people rather than investing in education, job training, and economic development. Were willing to invest in technology designed to manage and control people, but are we willing to invest in the very things we know will set them free?” Are we falling into the same trap in Aotearoa New Zealand?
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 01:21:56 +0000