An anti-war on drugs celebrity brigade is begging President Barack Obama to change how the nation deals with drug offenders.
Jim Carrey, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Chris Rock, Susan Sarandon, Will Smith, Woody Harrelson and many more signed a fawning letter to the President pleading for a kinder approach to drug offense cases.
In short, they say Obama should shut down the “prison industrial complex.”
Your hard work and leadership on issues affecting the unrepresented classes of people in our nation have served as an inspiration to many of us who hope for brighter futures for all Americans. In that spirit, we believe the time is right to further the work you have done around revising our national policies on the criminal justice system and continue moving from a suppression-based model to one that focuses on intervention and rehabilitation….
Your administration has moved in the right direction by committing increased funds to drug prevention and treatment programs and supporting state and local re-entry grants. We encourage you to continue your efforts to revamp the policies of the last 30 years that have seen the prison population skyrocket.
The greatest victims of the prison industrial complex are our nation’s children. Hundreds of thousands of children have lost a parent to long prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses, leaving these children to fend for themselves. Many of these children end up in the criminal justice system, which comes as no surprise as studies have shown the link between incarceration and broken families, juvenile delinquency, violence and poverty.