Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Help Not Handcuffs’ Statement of Support for September 9th Event to End Mass Incarceration and Enslavement

June 21, 2016 (Asbury Park) – Help Not Handcuffs today announced its solidarity with the “September 9th Event to End Mass Incarceration and Enslavement” organized by Decarcerate the Garden State.

Help Not Handcuffs seeks to remove arrest and coercion from programs, policies and laws impacting recovering and drug using populations. We accomplish our mission through community education and engagement, which empowers recovery, promotes harm reduction and fact based approaches to drug policy and social justice issues.

Our goals are in alignment with the “September 9th Event to End Mass Incarceration and Enslavement.” Unfortunately, New Jersey relies too heavily on its criminal justice system, which is inherently violent and dangerous. New Jersey’s recent expansion of the failed “War on Drugs” which is known by the surge in drug possession arrests[1], forcibly separates families, engenders social disabilities which cripple communities (especially communities of color) and feed into the forced treatment, Prohibition/Prison Industrial Complex.

With the recent release of the Sentencing Project’s report showing that African Americans are imprisoned at a ratio of 12 – 1 compared to Caucasians in New Jersey this event couldn’t be timelier. While New Jersey has taken steps to reduce its prison population, we stand in solidarity against the human rights abuses and the over-reliance of the use of our criminal justice system and its racially disparate impacts on September 9th.

Help Not Handcuffs encourages New Jersey residents and organizations to support, attend and promote this event to raise awareness of prison conditions - end the recent expansion of the probationary regime via drug possession arrests, forced treatment and other dangerous punishments – and end mass incarceration and enslavement.

Get involved by contacting: e-mail Decarc@DecarcerateNJ.org phone 908-881-5275

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