Mass Incarceration is Slavery

Morgan Kelly presents a workshop by JoNina Abron-Ervin & Lorenzo Ervin. “Mass Imprisonment is Prison Slavery” was presented at the 5th Annual Law & Disorder Conference held May 2014 at Portland State University. More people are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails than in any other country in the world. With just five percent of the world’s population, America has twenty-five percent of the world’s prison population. The workshop examines how the “war” on drugs led to the current mass imprisonment of people of color, who comprise half of the over two million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails; how mass imprisonment has devastated poor and low income communities of color; why mass imprisonment is slavery; and proposals for how to organize people of color to fight to end mass imprisonment.