00:00This is one of the great tragedies in our country today and we can no longer
00:06continue to sweep it under the rug. It has to be dealt with. Today a male
00:13African-American baby born today stands a one in four chance of ending up in
00:20jail. That is beyond unspeakable. So what we have to do is the radical reform of a
00:29broken criminal justice system what we have to do is end over policing in
00:40African-American neighborhoods. The reality is that both African-American
00:46community and the white community do marijuana at about equal rates. The
00:51reality is four times as many blacks get arrested for marijuana. Truth is that
00:56far more blacks get stopped for traffic violations. The truth is that sentencing
01:02for blacks is higher than for whites. We need fundamental police reform. Clearly
01:09clearly when we talk about a criminal justice system I would hope that we can
01:14all agree that we are sick and tired of seeing videos on television of unarmed
01:21people, often African-Americans, shot by police officers. What we have got to do is
01:27make it clear that any police officer who breaks the law will in fact be held
01:34accountable.
01:42I completely agree with Senator Sanders. The first speech I gave in this campaign back in April was about
01:48criminal justice reform and ending the era of mass incarceration. The statistics
01:53from Wisconsin are particularly troubling because it is the highest rate of
01:59incarceration for African-Americans in our nation, twice the national average. And we
02:05know of the tragic, terrible event that led to the death of Dantre Hamilton right here in Milwaukee. A young
02:14man, unarmed,
02:18who should still be with us. His family certainly believes that and so do I. So we have work to
02:24do.
02:25There have been some good recommendations about what needs to happen. President Obama's policing commission
02:31came out with some. I have fully endorsed those. But we have to restore policing that will actually
02:39protect the communities that police officers are sworn to protect. And then we have to go after sentencing,
02:46and that's one of the problems here in Wisconsin because so much of what happens in the criminal justice system
02:51doesn't happen at the federal level.
02:53It happens at the state and local level. But I would also add this. There are other racial discrepancies, really
03:00systemic racism in this state as in others, in education, in employment, in the kinds of factors that too often
03:10lead from a position where young people, particularly young men,
03:16are pushed out of school early, are denied employment opportunities. So when we talk about criminal justice reform and ending
03:23the era of mass incarceration, we also have to talk about jobs, education, housing, and other ways of helping communities
03:32do better.
