This July 4, the United States turns 250. We’ll celebrate with fireworks, parades, and barbecues. But for millions of Americans, the promise of that American Dream looks very different. On that same day, a 15-year-old will wake up behind bars, away from his family. A house will be burglarized, a car stolen, a person assaulted. A crime survivor will wake up feeling unsupported and unheard. An elderly woman serving a life sentence might take her final breath in a prison hospice. 

Most of us believe in accountability for wrongdoing, which means having laws and practices that uphold order and promote safety. But the way most people in this country actually experience the justice system is not through theoretical discussions regarding policy or infrastructure, it’s through everyday interactions.

The American justice system is experienced when someone feels unsafe walking to their car at night or opening up their store for the day. It is experienced when people—like my own brother—are locked up for years. It is experienced when Americans with records can’t get jobs or housing, violate their parole, and go right back to prison. 

Two hundred fifty years' worth of increasingly punitive decisions have brought us here; an era in which the intent of the justice system feels deeply disconnected from how it plays out for real people. A sprawling, expensive infrastructure that punishes crime but fails to adopt strategies that actually prevent it. One that excels at warehousing people in jails and prisons, but fails at true healing and rehabilitation, so people come home as better neighbors. A system quick to utilize the grief and pain of crime survivors to justify harsh punishments, but that rarely........

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