By IRN
CHICAGO – A National Football League Hall of Famer wants tax dollars diverted away from locking up nonviolent drug offenders and instead put into schools.
A forum in Chicago Friday focused on criminal justice reform and featured some Illinois state lawmakers, ACLU representatives and criminal justice activists. Former Chicago Bears star Richard Dent was among that group. He said being the middle child of a big family allowed him to learn some valuable lessons, especially when he saw three brothers get incarcerated for different reasons.
Dent said there should be a change of focus on who’s punished in the battle against drugs. The money saved from not locking up nonviolent drug offenders could be used elsewhere, Dent said.
“When you look at that budget and you take that kind of money and you take it to your teachers, you can be paying the teachers two, three times what they need because teachers are the ones that are going to teach your child.”
The organizer of the invitation-only event, Kristi Dunn Kucera, said one focus is changing drug laws.
“It’s kind of extreme for somebody who has a little bit of marijuana, not even dealing it, and they’re given these excessively harsh prison sentences that cost taxpayers a lot of money,” Kucera said.
As for some solutions, Kucera said that “only the most violent offenders need to be locked up, and we need to put more emphasis on rehabilitation and mental health care.”
Kucera said video of the forum will be published online at the website AdrestiaMedia.com/vox-captae.
