John Legend has decided to put his fame to good use. On Monday he announced the FREE AMERICA campaign to end mass incarceration.
“We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country,” Legend has said. “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.”
This isn’t Legend’s first public statement about mass incarceration – he voiced similar concerns in his Oscar acceptance speech this year, while accepting an award for the song he and Common collaborated on for Selma.
Abolish Prisons 