One summer afternoon in 2013, DC police detained, questioned and searched a man who appeared suspicious and potentially dangerous. This wasn't what I was wearing the day of the detention, to be fair, but I have a picture of that as well. I know it's very frightening -- try to remain calm.
2013年夏天的一个下午, 华盛顿特区的警察拘留、讯问 并搜查了一名 看起来可疑和并有潜在危险的男子。 说实话, 这不是我被拘留那天的样子 但那天的照片我也有。 我知道这很吓人 , 请大家尽量保持冷静。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
At this time, I was interning at the Public Defender Service in Washington DC, and I was visiting a police station for work. I was on my way out, and before I could make it to my car, two police cars pulled up to block my exit, and an officer approached me from behind. He told me to stop, take my backpack off and put my hands on the police car parked next to us. About a dozen officers then gathered near us. All of them had handguns, some had assault rifles. They rifled through my backpack. They patted me down. They took pictures of me spread on the police car, and they laughed.
那时候,我是实习生 在华盛顿特区的公设律师处实习, 当时我为了工作的事去的警察局。 在我走出警局, 还没走到我的车时, 两辆警车开到我前面挡住我去路, 一名警察从后面靠近我。 他让我停下,把背包拿下来 把手放在停在旁边的警车上。 然后大约十多个警察 聚集在我们周围。 他们全都有手枪, 有些警察有突击步枪。 他们搜遍了我的背包 他们把我拍趴下 他们给趴在警车上的我拍照, 他们还在笑。
And as all this was happening -- as I was on the police car trying to ignore the shaking in my legs, trying to think clearly about what I should do -- something stuck out to me as odd. When I look at myself in this photo, if I were to describe myself, I think I'd say something like, "19-year-old Indian male, bright T-shirt, wearing glasses." But they weren't including any of these details. Into their police radios as they described me, they kept saying, "Middle Eastern male with a backpack. Middle Eastern male with a backpack." And this description carried on into their police reports. I never expected to be described by my own government in these terms: "lurking," "nefarious," "terrorist." And the detention dragged on like this.
在这一切发生的时候 -- 当我趴在警车上努力无视 我发抖的双腿, 试图清醒地思考,我该做什么 -- 我突然想到些奇怪的事情。 看看这张照片里的我自己, 如果让我描述我自己, 我想我会这样描述, “19岁印度男性,亮色半袖, 戴眼镜。” 但警察并没提任何细节, 他们在向对讲机描述我时 一直在说,“中东男性,有背包。 中东男性,有背包。” 这个描述也写入了他们的 警方报告中。 我从没想到过被自己的政府用 这些词形容: “潜藏”, “邪恶的”, “恐怖分子”。 而我被继续拘留着,
They sent dogs trained to smell explosives to sweep the area I'd been in. They called the federal government to see if I was on any watch lists. They sent a couple of detectives to cross-examine me on why, if I claimed I had nothing to hide, I wouldn't consent to a search of my car. And I could see they weren't happy with me, but I felt I had no way of knowing what they'd want to do next. At one point, the officer who patted me down scanned the side of the police station to see where the security camera was to see how much of this was being recorded. And when he did that, it really sank in how completely I was at their mercy.
他们派了训练用于闻爆炸物的狗 搜索我停留过的区域。 他们给联邦政府打电话, 查我是不是在监管名单里。 他们派了两个侦探盘问我, 为什么 -- 我说我没什么可隐瞒的 却不同意警方搜查我的车。 我能明白他们对我的不满, 但我完全不知道他们下一步 要做什么。 把我拍趴下的警察一度 扫描了警局的一侧, 看安保摄像头在哪 以便了解这件事能被录下来多少。 当他那么做时, 真的说明了, 我是多么彻底地任他们摆布。
I think we're all normalized from a young age to the idea of police officers and arrests and handcuffs, so it's easy to forget how demeaning and coercive a thing it is to seize control over another person's body. I know it sounds like the point of my story is how badly treated I was because of my race -- and yes, I don't think I would've been detained if I were white. But actually, what I have in mind today is something else. What I have in mind is how much worse things might've been if I weren't affluent. I mean, they thought I might be trying to plant an explosive, and they investigated that possibility for an hour and a half, but I was never put in handcuffs, I was never taken to a jail cell. I think if I were from one of Washington DC's poor communities of color, and they thought I was endangering officers' lives, things might've ended differently. And in fact, in our system, I think it's better to be an affluent person suspected of trying to blow up a police station than it is to be a poor person who's suspected of much, much less than this.
从年幼时代开始,我们 对警察、拘捕和手铐的认知 被正常化, 所以我们容易忘了, 对他人身体的控制 是件多么贬低和强制性的事。 听上去我的故事的重点好像是 因为我的种族,我被恶劣地对待, 确实,如果我是白人, 我觉得不会被拘捕。 但是,今天我想的是另一件事。 我想的是,如果我不是个富人 事情会变的多糟糕。 警察以为我想安放爆炸物, 他们对这调查了一个半小时, 但我并没有被戴上手铐, 我也没有被送进牢房。 如果我来自华盛顿特区 最贫穷的有色人种族群, 而警察认为我威胁到了警员的生命, 事情可能会有不同的结局。 事实上,在我们的体制中,我觉得 做个有炸掉警察局嫌疑的富人 要比做个有小案子嫌疑的穷人 更好一些。
I want to give you an example from my current work. Right now, I'm working at a civil rights organization in DC, called Equal Justice Under Law. Let me start by asking you all a question. How many of you have ever gotten a parking ticket in your life? Raise your hand. Yeah. So have I. And when I had to pay it, it felt annoying and it felt bad, but I paid it and I moved on. I'm guessing most of you have paid your tickets as well. But what would happen if you couldn't afford the amount on the ticket and your family doesn't have the money either, what happens then?
我想举个现在我工作中的一个例子 如今,我在华盛顿民权组织工作 该组织称为“法律下的平等正义”。 首先让我问你们所有人一个问题 有多少人曾拿过停车罚单? 请举手。 是啊,我也拿过。 当我必须交罚款时 感觉有点讨厌,不高兴, 但我交了罚款,然后就忘了它。 我猜你们绝大多数也是交了罚款的。 但是如果你付不起罚款额, 会发生什么呢? 而且你的家人也没有钱, 那会发生什么?
Well, one thing that's not supposed to happen under the law is, you're not supposed to be arrested and jailed simply because you can't afford to pay. That's illegal under federal law. But that's what local governments across the country are doing to people who are poor. And so many of our lawsuits at Equal Justice Under Law target these modern-day debtors' prisons.
在法律面前, 有一件不应该发生的事情是 你不应该仅仅因为付不起罚款 就被捕,送监。 那在联邦法律下是违法的。 但这个国家的各个地方政府 对穷人就是这么做的。 在“法律下的平等正义”组织, 太多的诉讼 就是关于这些现代欠债人的监狱。
One of our cases is against Ferguson, Missouri. And I know when I say Ferguson, many of you will think of police violence. But today I want to talk about a different aspect of the relationship between their police force and their citizens. Ferguson was issuing an average of over two arrest warrants, per person, per year, mostly for unpaid debt to the courts. When I imagine what that would feel like if, every time I left my house, there was a chance a police officer would run my license plate, see a warrant for unpaid debt, seize my body they way the did in DC and then take me to a jail cell, I feel a little sick.
我们的一个案子是 诉密苏里州弗格森市。 我知道一提到弗格森, 很多人会想到警察暴力。 但今天我想说说另一方面, 警力与公民之间的关系。 弗格森平均每年、对每人 发出两个以上逮捕令, 大多数是为了未向法庭支付的欠债。 当我想象一下那种感觉: 每次离开家 都有可能有警察查我车牌, 看到未支付欠款的逮捕令, 然后像特区警察一样控制我身体, 然后把我送进牢房, 我觉得有点恶心。
I've met many of the people in Ferguson who have experienced this, and I've heard some of their stories. In Ferguson's jail, in each small cell, there's a bunk bed and a toilet, but they'd pack four people into each cell. So there'd be two people on the bunks and two people on the floor, one with nowhere to go except right next to the filthy toilet, which was never cleaned. In fact, the whole cell was never cleaned, so the floor and the walls were lined with blood and mucus. No water to drink, except coming out of a spigot connected to the toilet. The water looked and tasted dirty, there was never enough food, never any showers, women menstruating without any hygiene products, no medical attention whatsoever. When I asked a woman about medical attention, she laughed, and she said, "Oh, no, no. The only attention you get from the guards in there is sexual."
我见过很多的经历了这些的 弗格森人, 我也听到了一些他们的故事。 在弗格森拘留所, 每个小牢房里, 有一个双层床和一个马桶 但他们给每个牢房挤进四个人。 那么就会有两个人在床上, 两个人在地上 地上的其中一个 只能待在污秽的马桶旁边 一个从不清洗的马桶。 其实,整个牢房都从不清洗, 地板和墙壁满是血和粘液。 没有饮用水, 只有连在马桶上的水龙头出水。 水看上去很脏,喝着也脏, 食物永远不够, 没有机会洗澡, 女性经期没有卫生用品, 没有医疗,什么都没有。 当我问一名女性关于医疗关注的事, 她大笑,她说:“噢,不,不 在这,你从狱警得到的唯一关注 是性。”
So, they'd take the debtors to this place and they'd say, "We're not letting you leave until you make a payment on your debt." And if you could -- if you could call a family member who could somehow come up with some money, then maybe you were out. If it was enough money, you were out. But if it wasn't, you'd stay there for days or weeks, and every day the guards would come down to the cells and haggle with the debtors about the price of release that day. You'd stay until, at some point, the jail would be booked to capacity, and they'd want to book someone new in. And at that point, they'd think, "OK, it's unlikely this person can come up with the money, it's more likely this new person will." You're out, they're in, and the machine kept moving like that.
所以,警察把欠债人带到这里,说 “把债付清之前不会让你走的。” 如果你可以打电话, 找个能拿出点钱的家人, 也许你能出狱. 如果钱足够,你就出狱 但如果不行,你会在那等数天, 数个星期, 每天狱警会来牢房, 与欠债人讨论, 当天释放出狱的价钱。 你会一直等到,牢房住满了 而他们还想关些新人进去。 那时他们就会考虑, “好吧,这个人可能拿不出钱来, 新来的更有可能掏钱。” 那么你出去,他们进, 机器就一直这样运行。
I met a man who, nine years ago, was arrested for panhandling in a Walgreens. He couldn't afford his fines and his court fees from that case. When he was young he survived a house fire, only because he jumped out of the third-story window to escape. But that fall left him with damage to his brain and several parts of this body, including his leg. So he can't work, and he relies on social security payments to survive. When I met him in his apartment, he had nothing of value there -- not even food in his fridge. He's chronically hungry. He had nothing of value in his apartment except a small piece of cardboard on which he'd written the names of his children. He cherished this a lot. He was happy to show it to me. But he can't pay his fines and fees because he has nothing to give. In the last nine years, he's been arrested 13 times, and jailed for a total of 130 days on that panhandling case. One of those stretches lasted 45 days. Just imagine spending from right now until sometime in June in the place that I described to you a few moments ago.
我遇到一名男性, 他九年前因为在便利店里乞讨被捕。 他交不起那案子的罚款和诉讼费。 他小时候从火灾中, 因为跳出三楼窗户逃生才幸存。 但那次跳窗伤到他的大脑 以及身体几处,包括腿。 所以他不能工作, 他依赖社会保险费生存。 当我在他住所见他时, 他家没有任何值钱东西, 冰箱甚至没有食物。 他长期挨饿, 住所里唯一有价值的东西 是一小块纸板, 上面写着他孩子们的名字。 他视若珍宝, 非常高兴地拿给我看。 但是他一无所有,付不起罚款和 诉讼费。 在过去九年,他被拘留13次 坐牢总共130天, 就为了那件乞讨的案子。 那些拘留中有一次持续了45天。 请想象一下,从现在到六月的某天, 在我刚才向你描述的地方度过这段时间。
He told me about all the suicide attempts he's seen in Ferguson's jail; about the time a man found a way to hang himself out of reach of the other inmates, so all they could do was yell and yell and yell, trying to get the guards' attention so they could come down and cut him down. And he told me that it took the guards over five minutes to respond, and when they came, the man was unconscious. So they called the paramedics and the paramedics went to the cell. They said, "He'll be OK," so they just left him there on the floor. I heard many stories like this and they shouldn't have surprised me, because suicide is the single leading cause of death in our local jails. This is related to the lack of mental health care in our jails.
他跟我说了在弗格森监狱见过的所有 自杀行为; 一次,一个男人想办法 在其他犯人够不着的地方上吊。 所以大家能做的就是喊啊, 喊啊,喊啊, 试图让狱警注意到上吊的人 来牢房把他绳子切断救下他。 他告诉我,过了五分钟 狱警才回应, 等他们到时, 上吊的人已经昏迷。 狱警叫来医生,医生到了牢房。 说:“他会没事的” 然后就把他留在地板上不管了。 我听过很多这样的故事, 所以他们不应该惊到我 因为自杀是地方拘留所中的 唯一主导死因。 这有关拘留所中非常缺乏的 心理健康护理。
I met a woman, single mother of three, making seven dollars an hour. She relies on food stamps to feed herself and her children. About a decade ago, she got a couple of traffic tickets and a minor theft charge, and she can't afford her fines and fees on those cases. Since then, she's been jailed about 10 times on those cases, but she has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and she needs medication every day. She doesn't have access to those medications in Ferguson's jail, because no one has access to their medications. She told me about what it was like to spend two weeks in a cage, hallucinating people and shadows and hearing voices, begging for the medication that would make it all stop, only to be ignored. And this isn't anomalous, either: thirty percent of women in our local jails have serious mental health needs just like hers, but only one in six receives any mental health care while in jail.
我见过一名女性,三个孩子的单亲妈妈, 每小时挣七美元。 她靠粮票养活自己和孩子们。 大约十年前, 她拿到两张交通罚单, 和一个轻微偷窃罪 她交不起罚款和那些案子的诉讼费。 从那时候起, 她因这些案子被关进牢房大约10次。 但她患有精神分裂症和躁郁症, 每天都需要吃药, 在弗格森监狱她拿不到药物, 因为没有任何人能拿到自己的药。 她告诉我在一个笼子里关两个星期 是怎样的, 神志不清的她幻视到人,影子,幻听, 她不停乞求能治疗这些症状的药物, 但总是被忽略。 这并不是特例, 地方监狱中,百分之三十的女性 有严重心理健康问题, 就像刚才那位女性, 但只有六分之一能在监狱里 获得心理健康护理。
And so, I heard all these stories about this grotesque dungeon that Ferguson was operating for its debtors, and when it came time for me to actually see it and to go visit Ferguson's jail, I'm not sure what I was expecting to see, but I wasn't expecting this. It's an ordinary government building. It could be a post office or a school. It reminded me that these illegal extortion schemes aren't being run somewhere in the shadows, they're being run out in the open by our public officials. They're a matter of public policy. And this reminded me that poverty jailing in general, even outside the debtors' prison context, plays a very visible and central role in our justice system.
我听过关于这所“恐怖地牢”的 所有故事, 这所弗格森为其欠债人运营的监狱, 当我真正见到它时 造访弗格森监狱时, 我虽不确定自己会见到什么, 但我没想到这个。 它所是正常的政府建筑 看起来也可以是邮局或学校。 它提醒我,这些非法勒索行为 并不是在阴影中运作, 它们正由公职人员公开运作。 它们是公共政策的问题。 这提醒我,普遍来说, 关押穷人, 甚至在债务人监狱的情况之外, 在我们的司法系统里 扮演非常明显的中心角色。
What I have in mind is our policy of bail. In our system, whether you're detained or free, pending trial is not a matter of how dangerous you are or how much of a flight risk you pose. It's a matter of whether you can afford to post your bail amount. So Bill Cosby, whose bail was set at a million dollars, immediately writes the check, and doesn't spend a second in a jail cell. But Sandra Bland, who died in jail, was only there because her family was unable to come up with 500 dollars. In fact, there are half a million Sandra Blands across the country -- 500,000 people who are in jail right now, only because they can't afford their bail amount.
我想到的是我们的保释政策。 在我们的系统中, 无论你被拘留还是释放 等候审判并不有关你多危险, 也有关你带来多大威胁, 而是看你是否能负担保释金额度。 因此,面对一百万美元的保释金 比尔·考斯比 立即写支票,完全不用进牢房。 但是, Sandra Bland 死在拘留所里 仅仅因为她家里拿不出500美元。 事实上,全国有50万个 Sandra Bland, 此刻被关在拘留所里 有500,000人, 仅仅是因为支付不起保释金。
We're told that our jails are places for criminals, but statistically that's not the case: three out of every five people in jail right now are there pretrial. They haven't been convicted of any crime; they haven't pled guilty to any offense. Right here in San Francisco, 85 percent of the inmates in our jail in San Francisco are pretrial detainees. This means San Francisco is spending something like 80 million dollars every year to fund pretrial detention.
我们被告知,拘留所是 关押罪犯的地方, 但统计数据不是这样的: 此刻,拘留所每五个人中 有三个是审判前的状态。 他们还没有被定罪, 他们没有对任何犯罪行为认罪。 就在旧金山本地, 旧金山拘留所中85%的犯人 是审判前的被拘留者。 这意味着旧金山市每年花费 大约8千万美元 用于审判前的拘留。
Many of these people who are in jail only because they can't post bail are facing allegations so minor that the amount of time it would take for them to sit waiting for trial is longer than the sentence they would receive if convicted, which means they're guaranteed to get out faster if they just plead guilty. So now the choice is: Should I stay here in this horrible place, away from my family and my dependents, almost guaranteed to lose my job, and then fight the charges? Or should I just plead guilty to whatever the prosecutor wants and get out? And at this point, they're pretrial detainees, not criminals. But once they take that plea deal, we'll call them criminals, even though an affluent person would never have been in this situation, because an affluent person would have simply been bailed out.
这些人中的许多人, 仅仅因为不能付保释金而坐牢, 他们被起诉的原因很轻微, 以至于他们坐等审判花掉的时间 比认罪后被判的时间还长, 也就是说,如果认罪, 其实可以保证自己更快离开拘留所。 所以现在的选择是: 我应该留在这个恐怖的地方 远离家人和孩子们 几乎确定要丢工作 那样打这场官司? 还是应该对检察官给的罪名都认罪, 然后出狱? 此时此刻,他们是审判前被拘留者, 而不是罪犯。 可是一旦认罪, 我们就称之为罪犯了。 但是有钱人从不会处于这样的境况 因为有钱人会很容易地被保释出去。
At this point you might be wondering, "This guy's in the inspiration section, what is he doing --
此时你可能会想, “这家伙本应是激励演讲啊, 他干啥呢?”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
"This is extremely depressing. I want my money back."
“这太压抑了,我要退钱。”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
But in actuality, I find talking about jailing much less depressing than the alternative, because I think if we don't talk about these issues and collectively change how we think about jailing, at the end of all of our lives, we'll still have jails full of poor people who don't belong there. That really is depressing to me. But what's exciting to me is the thought that these stories can move us to think about jailing in different terms. Not in sterile policy terms like "mass incarceration," or "sentencing of nonviolent offenders," but in human terms.
但实际上, 我发现与其它方式相比, 谈一谈拘留比较不压抑, 因为如果我们不去说出这些问题, 从而集体改变我们对拘留的看法, 那么在我们生命终结时, 监狱里仍将关满了 本不该在那的穷人。 那对我来说真的太压抑了。 但让我兴奋的是, 这些故事推动我们 从不同方面思考一下监禁这件事。 并不是用枯燥的政策用语, 比如“大规模监禁” 或者“非暴力罪犯的量刑”, 而是从人的角度。
When we put a human being in a cage for days or weeks or months or even years, what are we doing to that person's mind and body? Under what conditions are we really willing to do that? And so if starting with a few hundred of us in this room, we can commit to thinking about jailing in this different light, then we can undo that normalization I was referring to earlier.
当我们把一个人关进笼子, 数天、数周、数月 甚至数年 我们在对这个人的心灵和身体 做些什么? 在什么条件下, 我们才真的想要那么做? 如果从这会场的几百个人开始 大家可以承诺开始思考监禁, 然后我们可以去掉 我之前提到的正常化。
If I leave you with anything today, I hope it's with the thought that if we want anything to fundamentally change -- not just to reform our policies on bail and fines and fees -- but also to make sure that whatever new policies replace those don't punish the poor and the marginalized in their own new way. If we want that kind of change, then this shift in thinking is required of each of us.
如果我今天启发了你们, 我希望是这种想法: 如果想要任何事从根本上改变, 而不是仅仅改革保释、罚款、费用, 而是要确保替代它们的新政策 不会用新的方式去惩罚穷人和 边缘化群体。 如果我们想要的是这种改变 那么变化思考方式 是我们每一个人都需要的。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)