Newly freed rapper Meek Mill is putting his celebrity status
behind criminal justice reforms in Pennsylvania, reported WHYY. He joined Gov.
Tom Wolf and other top state officials Thursday at the National Constitution
Center to push for changes in everything from probation and parole policies to
a cash bail system that Wolf said is equivalent to “debtor’s prison.”
Wolf said he hopes the national attention Mill’s case has
attracted will translate into real policy change. The governor called on the
state House to pass a trio
of bills recently approved the state Senate that would release
nonviolent offenders more quickly and help move more prisoners into substance
abuse programs, while also pumping more dollars into probation and parole
programs across the state.
The raft of legislation, Wolf said, is not just about
offender rehabilitation, but also victim protection.
“But we can do that while also ending the cycle of
incarceration that has left so many people, so many families feeling trapped,
helpless, without an opportunity to return to society after they’ve been
released,” he said, adding that the state needs to “stop using jails as mental
health facilities.”
Mill, who was raised in North Philadelphia’s Strawberry
Mansion neighborhood, described the community where he grew up as “ruthless”
and “drug-plagued.”
Still on probation after a 2007 arrest on drug and gun
charges that will likely be dismissed, Mill said said his probation officer
helped steer him into a treatment program after he told her he was addicted to
opioids.
“It changed my life,” he said Thursday.
It is the type of problem, Mill said, that those on court
supervision should not be afraid to admit to officers tasked with keeping
probationers on the straight and narrow.
“I don’t think any human being should be locked, shackled
from top to bottom, ankle to hand, because they use marijuana or was addicted
to opioids,” he said.
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