If a white teenager is arrested and convicted for stealing a car, the chances are good that he will not be sentenced to prison.
But if a black teenager is arrested and convicted for stealing a car, he is going to receive a stiff sentence and go to prison.
If a white person is caught with two ounces of crack cocaine in his possession, he will get probation, but if a black person is caught with two ounces of crack cocaine, he will go to prison.
That is the injustice of the justice system and the mass incarceration system that it has created, said the Rev. Dr. William E. Coleman. He is an associate pastor at the Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton.
Rev. Coleman spoke at the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville’s mini-conference – – “Breaking the Chains: Faith, Justice and Incarceration” – at the church on Main Street in the historic village of Lawrenceville Nov. 17.
It is also a topic that Rev. Coleman, who is married to U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman (D-Mercer, Middlesex, Somerset, Union) knows well. He is a retired New York Police Department detective.
“My theory is this,” Rev. Coleman said.
Africans were kidnapped and sold into slavery. When slavery was abolished, they were set free – but they were not trained and did not know what to do, Rev. Coleman said.
Today, some young men stand on the street corner selling drugs because they can’t get a job, Rev. Coleman said. They are “second-generation illiterates,” and they need to make money to support their family, he said.
A drug dealer tells them they can money by being a look-out during a drug deal – more money than they can make by stealing, he said. But they are the ones that get caught by the police and go to prison.
Mass incarceration – the imprisonment of minorities – perpetuates itself, Rev. Coleman said. A prisoner is sentenced to 18 months in prison. He gets into a fight with another prisoner – sometimes in self-defense – and is charged with another crime, and his 18-month sentence is extended.
Rev. Coleman, who grew up in Harlem in New York City, himself barely escaped becoming embroiled in the criminal justice system when he was a teenager. He dropped out of school and briefly joined a gang.
When he was told that he had to beat up another boy for his initiation into the gang or he would be beaten by the gang, Rev. Coleman decided he had enough.
“Here is what I did. I packed up and moved to Brooklyn,” Rev. Coleman said.
But his son and his stepson were not so fortunate.
The two young men served five years in prison for the armed robbery of the Toys ‘R Us at the Mercer Mall in Lawrence Township in 2000.
“For five years, I went to see them every Friday. Once you are in prison, it is not a pretty sight,” Rev. Coleman said.
“This whole notion of mass incarceration, I see the residual effects. There is a conspiracy that no one talks about,” he said. It starts with police officers and includes the Prosecutor’s Office and the judge.
A police officer will conduct an illegal search of a black man who, unlike most white men, has no one to advocate for him. He will be arrested on one charge, but by the time he appears in front of a judge, he will have racked up more charges, Rev. Coleman said.
He has no money to hire a lawyer, so a public defender is appointed to represent him. A plea deal will be offered – plead guilty and get four years in prison, or face a trial and get sentenced to 20 years in prison, Rev. Coleman said. He takes the plea deal.
Incarceration takes its toll on the family, Rev. Coleman said. The prisoner may be sent to a correctional institution far from his home, which makes it hard for the family to visit. They are not able to provide support to the prisoner, and it does not improve when he is released.
“If you are locked up, you have a criminal record and you can’t get a job. What is wrong is that they don’t get training (before they are released),” Rev. Coleman said.
But there is a way to improve things and make changes by writing to state Sen. Shirley K. Turner and state Assembly members Anthony Verrrelli and Verlina Reynolds Jackson, he said. They represent the 15th Legislative District (Hunterdon and Mercer).
“Talk about these things. Once our children were in prison, we saw how terrible it was,” Rev. Coleman said.