On the path that American children travel to adulthood, two institutions oversee the journey. The first is the one we hear a lot about: college. Some of you may remember the excitement that you felt when you first set off for college. Some of you may be in college right now and you're feeling this excitement at this very moment.
Proses kedewasaan anak-anak Amerika dinaungi oleh dua institusi. Yang pertama yang sering kita dengar adalah: universitas. Beberapa dari Anda mungkin ingat betapa bersemangat Anda saat pertama kali berangkat kuliah. Beberapa dari Anda mungkin sedang kuliah saat ini dan Anda merasakan semangat yang sama sekarang.
College has some shortcomings. It's expensive; it leaves young people in debt. But all in all, it's a pretty good path. Young people emerge from college with pride and with great friends and with a lot of knowledge about the world. And perhaps most importantly, a better chance in the labor market than they had before they got there.
Universitas punya beberapa kekurangan. Biayanya mahal, dan banyak orang muda yang harus berhutang. Tapi kesimpulannya, ini langkah yang cukup baik. Mereka lulus dengan kebanggaan dan teman-teman yang hebat serta banyak pengetahuan tentang dunia. Dan mungkin yang terpenting: kesempatan kerja yang lebih baik daripada sebelum mereka kuliah.
Today I want to talk about the second institution overseeing the journey from childhood to adulthood in the United States. And that institution is prison. Young people on this journey are meeting with probation officers instead of with teachers. They're going to court dates instead of to class. Their junior year abroad is instead a trip to a state correctional facility. And they're emerging from their 20s not with degrees in business and English, but with criminal records.
Hari ini saya ingin bicara mengenai institusi yang kedua yang menaungi proses kedewasaan anak-anak di Amerika. Dan institusi tersebut adalah penjara. Dalam proses yang satu ini, anak-anak muda bertemu dengan petugas lapas, bukannya guru. Mereka pergi ke sidang pengadilan alih-alih pergi ke kelas. Kunjungan tahun pertama mereka adalah ke Lembaga Permasyarakatan. Dan mereka melalui usia 20an, bukan dengan gelar bisnis dan Bahasa Inggris, tapi catatan kriminal mereka.
This institution is also costing us a lot, about 40,000 dollars a year to send a young person to prison in New Jersey. But here, taxpayers are footing the bill and what kids are getting is a cold prison cell and a permanent mark against them when they come home and apply for work.
Institusi ini juga menghabiskan banyak biaya. Memasukkan seorang pemuda ke penjara di New Jersey menghabiskan sekitar USD 40,000 per tahun. Tapi di sini, para wajib pajak taat pajak dan apa yang anak-anak dapatkan adalah sel penjara yang dingin dan reputasi negatif ketika mereka pulang dan melamar kerja.
There are more and more kids on this journey to adulthood than ever before in the United States and that's because in the past 40 years, our incarceration rate has grown by 700 percent. I have one slide for this talk. Here it is. Here's our incarceration rate, about 716 people per 100,000 in the population. Here's the OECD countries.
Jumlah anak-anak yang melalui proses yang terakhir ini semakin bertambah lebih banyak di Amerika, karena pada 40 tahun terakhir, tingkat penahanan kita telah meningkat 700 persen. Saya ingin menunjukkan sesuatu. Ini dia. Inilah tingkat penahanan kita: sekitar 716 orang per 100,000 populasi. Ini negara-negara OECD.
What's more, it's poor kids that we're sending to prison, too many drawn from African-American and Latino communities so that prison now stands firmly between the young people trying to make it and the fulfillment of the American Dream. The problem's actually a bit worse than this 'cause we're not just sending poor kids to prison, we're saddling poor kids with court fees, with probation and parole restrictions, with low-level warrants, we're asking them to live in halfway houses and on house arrest, and we're asking them to negotiate a police force that is entering poor communities of color, not for the purposes of promoting public safety, but to make arrest counts, to line city coffers.
Ironis, anak- anak miskinlah yang sering masuk ke penjara; banyak sekali yang berasal dari komunitas Afrika-Amerika dan Latin sehingga penjara kini menjadi batas antara anak muda yang mencoba memenuhi impiannya yang ideal di Amerika. Masalahnya sebenarnya sedikit lebih buruk dari ini karena selain mengirimkan anak-anak miskin ke penjara, kita membebani anak-anak miskin ini dengan biaya pengadilan, dengan masa percobaan dan pembebasan bersyarat, dengan surat penangkapan dan penahanan, kita menempatkan mereka di rumah singgah dan rumah tahanan, dan kita meminta mereka untuk bernegosiasi dengan petugas polisi yang memasuki komunitas kulit berwarna yang miskin, bukan untuk mengadvokasikan keamanan umum, tapi menghitung jumlah penangkapan dan mengisi pundi-pundi kota.
This is the hidden underside to our historic experiment in punishment: young people worried that at any moment, they will be stopped, searched and seized. Not just in the streets, but in their homes, at school and at work.
Inilah sisi tersembunyi dalam sejarah eksperimen kita dengan hukuman: anak-anak muda khawatir setiap saat akan dicegat, digeledah, dan ditangkap; tidak hanya di jalanan, tapi rumah-rumah mereka, di sekolah dan di tempat kerja.
I got interested in this other path to adulthood when I was myself a college student attending the University of Pennsylvania in the early 2000s. Penn sits within a historic African-American neighborhood. So you've got these two parallel journeys going on simultaneously: the kids attending this elite, private university, and the kids from the adjacent neighborhood, some of whom are making it to college, and many of whom are being shipped to prison.
Saya mulai tertarik pada proses kedewasaan yang ini sewaktu saya sendiri masih seorang mahasiswa di University of Pennsylvania (Penn) pada awal tahun 2000-an. Penn berada di tengah pemukiman bersejarah kaum Afrika-Amerika. Jadi Anda bisa melihat kedua proses paralel ini berjalan bersamaan: anak-anak yang belajar di universitas swasta elit, dan anak-anak dari lingkungan lainnya, beberapa di antaranya berhasil kuliah, dan banyak yang dikirim ke penjara.
In my sophomore year, I started tutoring a young woman who was in high school who lived about 10 minutes away from the university. Soon, her cousin came home from a juvenile detention center. He was 15, a freshman in high school. I began to get to know him and his friends and family, and I asked him what he thought about me writing about his life for my senior thesis in college. This senior thesis became a dissertation at Princeton and now a book.
Di tahun kedua saya, saya mengajar seorang siswi SMA yang rumahnya berjarak sekitar 10 menit dari universitas. Tidak lama, sepupunya pulang dari pusat tahanan remaja. Dia berusia 15 tahun, baru saja masuk SMA. Saya mulai mengenal dia dan teman-temannya dan keluarganya, dan saya bertanya apa pendapatnya jika saya menuliskan kisah hidupnya untuk Tugas Akhir saya di universitas. Tugas Akhir ini menjadi disertasi di Princeton dan sekarang adalah sebuah buku.
By the end of my sophomore year, I moved into the neighborhood and I spent the next six years
Di akhir tahun kedua saya, Saya pindah ke lingkungan tersebut, dan selama enam tahun saya mencoba
trying to understand what young people were facing as they came of age. The first week I spent in this neighborhood, I saw two boys, five and seven years old, play this game of chase, where the older boy ran after the other boy. He played the cop. When the cop caught up to the younger boy, he pushed him down, handcuffed him with imaginary handcuffs, took a quarter out of the other child's pocket, saying, "I'm seizing that." He asked the child if he was carrying any drugs or if he had a warrant. Many times, I saw this game repeated, sometimes children would simply give up running, and stick their bodies flat against the ground with their hands above their heads, or flat up against a wall. Children would yell at each other, "I'm going to lock you up, I'm going to lock you up and you're never coming home!" Once I saw a six-year-old child pull another child's pants down and try to do a cavity search.
untuk mengerti apa yang anak muda hadapi dalam proses menjadi dewasa. Minggu pertama saya di sana, saya melihat dua anak laki-laki berumur 5 dan 7 tahun, bermain kejar-kejaran. Yang lebih tua mengejar yang lebih muda. Dia menjadi polisinya. Sewaktu si polisi menangkap anak yang lebih muda, dia mendorongnya ke tanah, memborgolnya dengan borgol bohongan, mengambil 25 sen dari kantong anak itu, dan berkata, "Ini saya sita." Dia bertanya apakah anak itu membawa narkoba atau apakah dia punya surat penangkapan. Sering kali, saya melihat permainan ini berulang. Terkadang anak-anak berhenti berlari, dan merebahkan tubuhnya di tanah dengan tangan di atas kepalanya atau bersandar pada dinding. Mereka berteriak satu sama lain, "Saya akan memenjarakan kamu, Saya akan memenjarakan kamu dan kamu tidak akan pernah pulang!" Pernah saya melihat anak berumur enam menurunkan celana anak lainnya dan melakukan penggeledahan tubuh.
In the first 18 months that I lived in this neighborhood, I wrote down every time I saw any contact between police and people that were my neighbors. So in the first 18 months, I watched the police stop pedestrians or people in cars, search people, run people's names, chase people through the streets, pull people in for questioning, or make an arrest every single day, with five exceptions. Fifty-two times, I watched the police break down doors, chase people through houses or make an arrest of someone in their home. Fourteen times in this first year and a half, I watched the police punch, choke, kick, stomp on or beat young men after they had caught them.
Selama 18 bulan pertama, saya akan mencatat acap kali saya melihat ada kontak antara polisi dan para tetangga saya. Jadi pada 18 bulan pertama, Saya memperhatikan polisi mencegat pejalan kaki atau pengendara mobil, menggeledah, menyelidiki seseorang, mengejar orang di jalanan, mempepet orang untuk ditanyai, atau menangkap orang setiap hari, dengan lima pengecualian. Saya melihat polisi 52 kali mendobrak pintu, mengejar orang dari rumah ke rumah atau menangkap seseorang di rumahnya. Selama satu setengah tahun pertama, 14 kali saya melihat polisi menonjok, mencekik, menendang, menginjak, memukuli pemuda setelah mereka menangkap mereka.
Bit by bit, I got to know two brothers, Chuck and Tim. Chuck was 18 when we met, a senior in high school. He was playing on the basketball team and making C's and B's. His younger brother, Tim, was 10. And Tim loved Chuck; he followed him around a lot, looked to Chuck to be a mentor. They lived with their mom and grandfather in a two-story row home with a front lawn and a back porch. Their mom was struggling with addiction all while the boys were growing up. She never really was able to hold down a job for very long. It was their grandfather's pension that supported the family, not really enough to pay for food and clothes and school supplies for growing boys. The family was really struggling.
Perlahan, saya mengenal dua orang kakak-beradik: Chuck dan Tim. Chuck berusia 18 tahun ketika itu; seorang senior di SMA. Dia tergabung di tim basket dan mendapat nilai C dan B. Adiknya, Tim, berumur 10. Dan Tim menyayangi Chuck; dia hampir selalu mengikuti kakaknya Ia meneladani Chuck. Mereka tinggal dengan ibu dan kakeknya di rumah dua lantai dengan halaman depan dan teras belakang. Sang ibu berjuang melawan kecanduan selagi anak-anaknya tumbuh besar. Dia tidak pernah bisa melakukan satu pekerjaan untuk waktu lama. Uang pensiun kakeknya lah yang menyokong keluarga itu, namun tidak cukup untuk membeli makanan dan pakaian serta peralatan sekolah mereka seiring mereka bertumbuh. Keluarga itu benar-benar kesulitan.
So when we met, Chuck was a senior in high school. He had just turned 18. That winter, a kid in the schoolyard called Chuck's mom a crack whore. Chuck pushed the kid's face into the snow and the school cops charged him with aggravated assault. The other kid was fine the next day, I think it was his pride that was injured more than anything.
Jadi waktu kami bertemu, Chuck adalah senior di SMA. Dia baru saja menginjak umur 18 tahun. Pada musim dingin tahun itu, seorang anak di halaman sekolah menyebut ibu Chuck pelacur. Chuck mendorong wajah anak itu ke salju dan polisi sekolah menuntutnya dengan kasus penyerangan. Anak satunya telah pulih esok harinya, Saya rasa yang jauh lebih terluka adalah harga dirinya.
But anyway, since Chuck was 18, this agg. assault case sent him to adult county jail on State Road in northeast Philadelphia, where he sat, unable to pay the bail -- he couldn't afford it -- while the trial dates dragged on and on and on through almost his entire senior year. Finally, near the end of this season, the judge on this assault case threw out most of the charges and Chuck came home with only a few hundred dollars' worth of court fees hanging over his head. Tim was pretty happy that day.
Tapi, karena Chuck berusia 18 tahun, kasus ini menjerumuskannya ke penjara daerah untuk orang dewasa di State Road di timur laut Philadelphia, dimana ia tidak dapat membayar uang jaminan karena tidak mampu sementara persidangannya terus-menerus ditunda, menghabiskan setahun terakhirnya di sekolah. Akhirnya, mendekati akhir musim itu, hakim yang menangani kasus itu menarik semua tuntutan dan Chuck pulang ke rumah dengan hutang beberapa ratus dolar untuk membayar biaya pengadilan. Tim cukup senang hari itu.
The next fall, Chuck tried to re-enroll as a senior, but the school secretary told him that he was then 19 and too old to be readmitted. Then the judge on his assault case issued him a warrant for his arrest because he couldn't pay the 225 dollars in court fees that came due a few weeks after the case ended. Then he was a high school dropout living on the run.
Musim gugur berikutnya, Chuck mencoba mendaftar sekolah lagi, tapi sekretaris sekolah berkata, dia sudah berumur 19 dan terlalu tua untuk bersekolah di sana, Kemudian hakim kasus sebelumnya mengeluarkan surat penangkapan karena dia tidak dapat membayar biaya pengadilan sebanyak $225 yang tenggat waktunya jatuh beberapa minggu setelah kasusnya berakhir. Semenjak itu, dia menjadi siswa putus sekolah yang hidup dalam pelarian.
Tim's first arrest came later that year after he turned 11. Chuck had managed to get his warrant lifted and he was on a payment plan for the court fees and he was driving Tim to school in his girlfriend's car. So a cop pulls them over, runs the car, and the car comes up as stolen in California. Chuck had no idea where in the history of this car it had been stolen. His girlfriend's uncle bought it from a used car auction in northeast Philly. Chuck and Tim had never been outside of the tri-state, let alone to California. But anyway, the cops down at the precinct charged Chuck with receiving stolen property. And then a juvenile judge, a few days later, charged Tim, age 11, with accessory to receiving a stolen property and then he was placed on three years of probation. With this probation sentence hanging over his head,
Tim ditangkap pertama kali akhir tahun itu saat dia menginjak umur 11 tahun. Chuck berhasil terlepas dari penangkapannya; ia berencana membayar biaya pengadilan, dan ia sedang mengantar Tim ke sekolah dengan mobil pacarnya ketika seorang polisi mencegat mereka, memeriksa mobilnya, dan ternyata itu mobil curian dari California. Chuck tidak tahu kapan dan bagaimana mobil tersebut dicuri. Paman pacarnya membeli mobil itu dari pelelangan mobil bekas di timur laut Philly. Chuck & Tim belum pernah keluar dari daerah tiga negara bagian itu, apalagi California. Tapi, para polisi di daerah tersebut menuduh Chuck menerima barang curian. Beberapa hari setelahnya, hakim kriminalisasi remaja menuduh Tim yang berumur 11 tahun membantu menerima barang curian dan dia dihukum dengan tiga tahun masa percobaan. Chuck memikirkan hukuman masa percobaan ini,
Chuck sat his little brother down and began teaching him how to run from the police. They would sit side by side on their back porch looking out into the shared alleyway and Chuck would coach Tim how to spot undercover cars, how to negotiate a late-night police raid, how and where to hide.
dan berbincang dengan adiknya. Ia mulai mengajarinya cara melarikan diri dari polisi. Mereka duduk bersebelahan di teras belakang yang menghadap gang rumah mereka, dan Chuck melatih Tim cara mengenali mobil penyamaran polisi, cara bernegosiasi sewaktu razia, cara dan lokasi untuk bersembunyi.
I want you to imagine for a second what Chuck and Tim's lives would be like if they were living in a neighborhood where kids were going to college, not prison. A neighborhood like the one I got to grow up in. Okay, you might say. But Chuck and Tim, kids like them, they're committing crimes! Don't they deserve to be in prison? Don't they deserve to be living in fear of arrest? Well, my answer would be no. They don't. And certainly not for the same things that other young people with more privilege are doing with impunity. If Chuck had gone to my high school, that schoolyard fight would have ended there, as a schoolyard fight. It never would have become an aggravated assault case. Not a single kid that I went to college with has a criminal record right now. Not a single one. But can you imagine how many might have if the police had stopped those kids and searched their pockets for drugs as they walked to class? Or had raided their frat parties in the middle of the night?
Saya ingin Anda membayangkan sebentar seperti apa hidup Chuck dan Tim jika mereka tinggal di lingkungan yang semua anak-anaknya berkuliah, bukannya dipenjarakan. Lingkungan semacam lingkungan masa kecil saya. Mungkin Anda berkata, baiklah. Tapi anak-anak seperti Chuck dan Tim melakukan kejahatan! Bukankah mereka pantas dipenjara, dan hidup penuh ketakutan akan penangkapan? Jawaban saya adalah: Tidak. Itu tidak pantas, terutama karena anak-anak lain dari keluarga yang lebih mampu mendapatkan kekebalan hukum saat melakukan hal serupa. Jika Chuck belajar di SMA saya, perkelahiannya ketika itu akan dianggap sekadar sebagai perkelahian antarsiswa, dan tidak akan pernah dipermasalahkan lebih lanjut. Tak satupun teman-teman kuliah saya memiliki catatan kriminal. Tak seorang pun. Bisakah Anda bayangkan berapa banyak yang akan memiliki catatan kriminal apabila mereka semua diperlakukan seperti Chuck dan Tim? Dicegat & digeledah; pestanya dirazia di tengah malam?
Okay, you might say. But doesn't this high incarceration rate partly account for our really low crime rate? Crime is down. That's a good thing. Totally, that is a good thing. Crime is down. It dropped precipitously in the '90s and through the 2000s. But according to a committee of academics convened by the National Academy of Sciences last year, the relationship between our historically high incarceration rates and our low crime rate is pretty shaky. It turns out that the crime rate goes up and down irrespective of how many young people we send to prison.
Anda berkata, Baiklah. Tapi bukankah tingginya rasio penahanan disebabkan oleh setidaknya rendahnya tingkat kriminalitas? Jumlah kriminalitas menurun. Bagus, bukan? Tentu ini bagus. Tingkat kriminalitas menurun, tepatnya menurun drastis di tahun 90an sampai 2000an. Tapi menurut sekumpulan akademisi yang berkumpul pada Akademi Ilmiah Nasional tahun lalu, hubungan antara sejarah tingkat penangkapan kita dan rendahnya rasio kriminalitas tidaklah konsisten. Faktanya, rasio kriminalitas tidaklah stabil, terlepas dari jumlah pemuda/i yang kita jebloskan ke penjara.
We tend to think about justice in a pretty narrow way: good and bad, innocent and guilty. Injustice is about being wrongfully convicted. So if you're convicted of something you did do, you should be punished for it. There are innocent and guilty people, there are victims and there are perpetrators. Maybe we could think a little bit more broadly than that.
Kita cenderung memandang konsep keadilan secara sempit: baik dan buruk, bersalah dan tak bersalah. Ketidakadilan adalah ketika seseorang dituduh secara tidak benar. Jadi jika Anda didakwa atas sesuatu yang Anda lakukan, Anda harus dihukum karenanya. Ada orang yang bersalah dan tidak, ada korban dan pelaku kejahatan. Mungkin kita dapat berpikir sedikit lebih luas lagi.
Right now, we're asking kids who live in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, who have the least amount of family resources, who are attending the country's worst schools, who are facing the toughest time in the labor market, who are living in neighborhoods where violence is an everyday problem, we're asking these kids to walk the thinnest possible line -- to basically never do anything wrong.
Saat ini, kita mengharapkan anak-anak di lingkungan miskin, yang penghasilan keluarganya sedikit sekali, yang belajar di sekolah terburuk di negara ini, yang memiliki kesulitan terbesar di dalam lapangan kerja, yang tinggal di lingkungan penuh kekerasan sebagai makanan sehari-hari, untuk menelusuri jalan yang amat sempit: untuk tidak pernah melakukan kesalahan.
Why are we not providing support to young kids facing these challenges? Why are we offering only handcuffs, jail time and this fugitive existence? Can we imagine something better? Can we imagine a criminal justice system that prioritizes recovery, prevention, civic inclusion, rather than punishment? (Applause) A criminal justice system that acknowledges the legacy of exclusion that poor people of color in the U.S. have faced and that does not promote and perpetuate those exclusions. (Applause) And finally, a criminal justice system that believes in black young people, rather than treating black young people as the enemy to be rounded up. (Applause)
Mengapa kita bukannya membantu mereka menghadapi tantangan ini? Mengapa kita hanya memborgol, memenjarakan dan mengejar mereka? Dapatkah kita melakukan sesuatu yang lebih baik? Bayangkan sistem peradilan pidana yang memprioritaskan perbaikan, pencegahan, keterlibatan sipil, alih-alih penghukuman. (Tepuk tangan) Suatu sistem peradilan pidana yang mengakui adanya diskriminasi dan pengucilan komunitas miskin kulit berwarna di Amerika dan tidak menyokong, malahan melanggengkan pengucilan tersebut. (Tepuk tangan) Dan suatu sistem peradilan yang akhirnya mempercayai, dan bukannya memperlakukan pemuda/i kulit hitam sebagai musuh. (Tepuk tangan)
The good news is that we already are. A few years ago, Michelle Alexander wrote "The New Jim Crow," which got Americans to see incarceration as a civil rights issue of historic proportions in a way they had not seen it before. President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have come out very strongly on sentencing reform, on the need to address racial disparity in incarceration. We're seeing states throw out Stop and Frisk as the civil rights violation that it is. We're seeing cities and states decriminalize possession of marijuana. New York, New Jersey and California have been dropping their prison populations, closing prisons, while also seeing a big drop in crime. Texas has gotten into the game now, also closing prisons, investing in education. This curious coalition is building from the right and the left, made up of former prisoners and fiscal conservatives, of civil rights activists and libertarians, of young people taking to the streets to protest police violence against unarmed black teenagers, and older, wealthier people -- some of you are here in the audience -- pumping big money into decarceration initiatives In a deeply divided Congress, the work of reforming our criminal justice system is just about the only thing that the right and the left are coming together on.
Kabar baiknya adalah: kita sedang mengusahakan ini. Beberapa tahun lalu, Michelle Alexander menulis "The New Jim Crow," yang membuat warga Amerika melihat penahanan sebagai isu hak-hak sipil melalui perspektif yang sangat baru, sehingga ini sangatlah historis. Presiden Obama dan Jaksa Agung Eric Holder menyokong penuh reformasi penghukuman, perlunya mengatasi diskriminasi rasial dalam penahanan. Banyak negara bagian menghapuskan penggeledahan di tempat karena itu melanggar hak-hak sipil. Banyak kota dan negara bagian mendekriminalisasi mariyuana. New York, New Jersey, dan California telah menurunkan jumlah populasi penjara, menutup penjara, dan mengalami penurunan drastis tingkat kriminalitas. Texas juga turut serta sekarang: menutup penjara, berinvestasi dalam bidang pendidikan. Koalisi yang menarik ini dibentuk oleh berbagai pihak: oleh mantan napi dan para konservatif dalam hal fiskal, oleh aktivis hak-hak sipil dan kebebasan, oleh pemuda/i yang turun ke jalanan untuk memprotes kekerasan polisi terhadap remaja kulit hitam yang tak bersenjata, dan orang-orang yang lebih tua dan kaya -- beberapa dari Anda diantaranya -- menyalurkan dana yang besar untuk memprakarsai pembebasan di tengah Kongres yang terbagi, menyusun ulang sistem peradilan pidana kita adalah isu yang menyatukan semua lapisan masyarakat kita.
I did not think I would see this political moment in my lifetime. I think many of the people who have been working tirelessly to write about the causes and consequences of our historically high incarceration rates did not think we would see this moment in our lifetime. The question for us now is, how much can we make of it? How much can we change?
Saya tidak menyangka saya akan menyaksikan momentum politik ini. Saya rasa banyak orang yang telah menulis tanpa lelah akan penyebab dan konsekuensi dari tingginya jumlah penahanan dalam sejarah tidak menyangka kita akan melihat momentum ini di dalam hidup kita. Pertanyaannya sekarang: seberapa jauh kita akan memanfaatkan ini? Seberapa jauh kita dapat berubah?
I want to end with a call to young people, the young people attending college and the young people struggling to stay out of prison or to make it through prison and return home. It may seem like these paths to adulthood are worlds apart, but the young people participating in these two institutions conveying us to adulthood, they have one thing in common: Both can be leaders in the work of reforming our criminal justice system. Young people have always been leaders in the fight for equal rights, the fight for more people to be granted dignity and a fighting chance at freedom. The mission for the generation of young people coming of age in this, a sea-change moment, potentially, is to end mass incarceration and build a new criminal justice system, emphasis on the word justice.
Saya ingin menutup dengan panggilan bagi para pemuda/i, mereka yang masih berkuliah dan mereka yang berusaha untuk tidak masuk penjara atau yang berhasil keluar dan pulang ke rumah. Kedua proses kedewasaan ini memang tampak sangatlah berbeda, tapi mereka yang terlibat dalam kedua institusi yang mengantarkan kita menuju kedewasaan ini memiliki satu persamaan: Keduanya dapat memimpin reformasi sistem peradilan pidana kita. Anak muda selalu memimpin perjuangan penyamarataan hak, agar lebih banyak orang memperoleh martabatnya dan berkesempatan memperjuangkan kebebasannya. Misi generasi muda yang beranjak dewasa pada masa titik balik ini, secara potensial, adalah untuk mengakhiri tahanan masal dan membangun sistem yang baru, yang menitikberatkan keadilan.
Thanks.
Terima kasih.
(Applause)
(Tepuk tangan)