The problem with probation and parole
During the November election, voters across the country approved a slew of initiatives to reform police departments, curb the failed war on drugs and reduce incarceration. But millions of people are still being brutalized by a subtler, yet no less abusive, form of law enforcement: probation and parole.
Promoted as alternatives to incarceration, probation and parole have become systems of oppression and control, primarily over Black and brown people. To fully reckon with racial injustice and police abuses, we must reform these discriminatory systems of supervision.
Take Willie White, a middle-age Black father I met in December 2019 at a jail in Lowndes County, Georgia.
