John Legend believes mass incarceration is “destroying” America.
The 36-year-old singer won the Academy Award for his and rapper Common’s song Glory this year and at the Oscars the pair delivered a riveting speech that proved to be a powerful political statement which addressed the United States prison system.
But John isn’t stopping there, as the nine-time Grammy-winning R&B crooner has launched a campaign called FREE AMERICA Monday in an attempt to put an end to the practice of mass incarceration.
“We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country,” he noted in an interview, according to the Associated Press.
“It's destroying families, it's destroying communities and we're the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.”
On Thursday John will perform at an Austin, Texas correctional facility as part of the FREE AMERICA project. The outlet reports he’ll also be meeting with state legislators during a press conference to discuss the criminal justice system, tasks the Wake Up Everybody singer is happy to take on.
“I’m just trying to create some more awareness to this issue and trying to make some real change legislatively,” John detailed. “And we're not the only ones. There are senators that are looking at this, like Rand Paul and Cory Booker, there are other nonprofits that are looking at this, and I just wanted to add my voice to that.”
John looks at the approval of Proposition 47 in California as a win for his campaign. The legislation reduces petty crimes like shoplifting, possession of small amounts of drugs and other minor offenses from felony status to a lesser misdemeanour classification.
"Once you have that tag of a felony on your name, it's hard for you to do anything," John said. "Getting those reduced to misdemeanours really impacted a lot of lives and we hope to launch more initiatives like that around the country."
