The deep disparities in our nation’s criminal justice system are not new. They are not secret. For me, they are deeply personal. For years, policymakers, advocates, and community members have known that our criminal justice system disproportionately punishes black and brown people, yet we have seen too little progress made towards addressing this inequality.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, 23,000 people are currently incarcerated in Massachusetts. Of those currently in prison, more than a quarter are black - despite the fact that black residents make up only seven percent of the Commonwealth’s population; hispanics comprise 27 percent of inmates, but only 10 percent of the population. Black residents in the 7th Congressional district, on average, are incarcerated at 6 times the rate of white residents. Communities that have a significant number of low-income households and minority residents account for an incredibly disproportionate number of those currently behind bars.

I have talked throughout this campaign about the fact that many of the disparities we see in the 7th District are not naturally occurring - they are the result of previous policy decisions; the issues in our criminal justice system are no exception. The disastrous consequences of the war on drugs, the incarceration that results directly from the imposition of cash bail and exorbitant court costs, the perverse incentive of the for-profit prison industry - each of these is a policy decision that has led to the disproportionate imprisonment of people of color. Addressing each of them will require intentional work to roll back decades of inequitable policy.

Moreover, we must end the profitization of free and forced labor by inmates. Today, nearly 700,000 inmates hold jobs in prisons, ranging from mopping floors and serving food to GED tutoring and office filing, oftentimes earning little to no pay for their work. It’s imperative that inmates be given better living conditions, fairer wages, and the basic human dignity that they deserve. While front and back-end reforms to our prison system are desperately needed, so too are changes that impact the experiences of men and women already inside of it.

We must also be cognizant that criminal justice challenges cannot be addressed only by focusing on what happens between the moment an individual becomes court involved and the moment they are released from prison. Social determinants like housing, education, health, and economic opportunity play a critical role in whether young people end up on a trajectory towards court-involvement, and whether individuals who were previously imprisoned remain at risk of re-incarceration. We must be committed to a criminal justice reform approach that recognizes the importance of both early intervention and comprehensive support for those who have been previously incarcerated.

On the City Council, I have been committed to addressing the social conditions that lead to the disproportionate incarceration of black and brown men and women. I’ve worked to reform school discipline policies that lead to the pushout of minority students. I worked to increase access to housing among non-violent individuals with CORIs. And I filed a resolution in support of legislation that would create a review panel to make recommendations on gender responsive and trauma informed approaches that address specific needs for justice involved women, including family visitation, reproductive health care, and pretrial services. This is the same kind of intentional, impactful leadership we need on these issues in Congress.