The book was banned by New Jersey prisons, and I understand why: it showed me the injustice of our criminal justice system
这本书在New Jersey监狱中被禁止了，而我明白为什么：它向我展示了我们的司法系统中的不正义。
When I heard that The New Jim Crow – a book by Michelle Alexander about how mass incarceration in America is a new form of racial control – had been banned by New Jersey prisons, I was shocked, angered and saddened. That’s the exact same way I felt when I first read the book behind bars.
当我听说《新吉姆克劳》——一本由Michelle Alexander写的关于美国的大规模囚禁如何成为了一种新形式的种族控制——被New Jersey监狱禁止时，我很震惊，愤怒和悲伤。这和我第一次在监牢后面看到这本书时候的感受一样。
At the time, I was serving a sentence of life without parole for a nonviolent drug crime in a Oklahoma federal prison. Reading the book transformed my life. It made me aware that all the racial inequities and disparities caused by the “war on drugs” aren’t an accident.
在那时，我正在因为非暴力的毒品犯罪而在Oklahoma联邦监狱坐牢，没有假释。阅读这本书改变了我的生活。它让我意识到了所有由“反毒战争”中制造的种族不平等和差距并不是偶然。
在我阅读《新吉姆克劳》之前，我认为我身边的人被周期性的套头，搜查，逮捕和被送进看守所是正常的。我在监狱中遇到的每个人都是黑人或棕色人，但对我来说这并不异常。关于我们因为非暴力毒品犯罪而受到终身监禁但同时白人做了更严重的罪行却被判处短的多的刑期这一事实，我也不认为有问题。
The New Jim Crow showed me there was nothing normal about that at all. There was nothing normal about the fact that I had seen black and brown fathers locked in prison so long that their sons grew up to be men in their absence – men who would often go on to be arrested themselves and sent to the same prison cells as their fathers.
《新吉姆克劳》向我展示了这一点也不正常。关于我看到的黑人和棕色人父亲们被长期关在监狱里，因此他们的儿子们在没有他们的陪伴的情况下长大成人这一事实一点也不正常——这些人他们自己经常被逮捕，并被送到他们的父亲们待过的相同的监狱囚牢。
The book put my personal experiences into a bigger perspective for me. It taught me that there are more African Americans under correctional control (in jails, prison, parole, probation) now than were enslaved before the start of the US civil war. And more African Americans are disenfranchised today due to felony convictions than in 1870, the year the 15th amendment – which prohibits laws denying African Americans the right to vote on the basis of their race – was ratified.
对我来说，这本书将我的个人经历放入了一种更大的视角中。它告诉我，现在有比在美国内战之前被奴役的黑人数量更多的黑人处于矫正控制下（在看守所，监狱，假释，缓刑中）。由于被定重罪，今天比起1870年更多黑人被剥夺公民权，而1870年是宪法第15修正案——废除基于种族否认黑人有投票权的法律——被批准的这一年。
With African Americans and Latinos making up nearly 60% of the prison population but only 30% of the US population, it is hard to deny that mass incarceration is racially motivated, as the book persuasively argues.
黑人和拉丁裔占监狱人口总数的60%，但只占美国人口总数的30%，要否认大规模囚禁是种族主义驱动的是非常困难的，这本书有说服力的说明了这点。
This realization inspired me to start my own grassroots organization called Crack Open the Door, an organization I dedicated to freeing first time non-violent crack cocaine offenders serving life without parole.
这一事实鼓舞了我开始组建我自己的草根组织，叫做“裂缝开启大门”，一个我专门用于解救那些第一次进行非暴力可卡因犯罪而被判处没有假释的终身监禁的人的组织。
To further this cause, I reached out to civil rights organizations, men and women in Congress, reporters – but no one answered my cries for help. That’s when I contacted Alexander, the author of the book that had set everything in motion.
为了实现这一目标，我找了公民权利组织，参议院的男人和女人，记者——但是没人回应我的求助。然后我联系了Alexander，这本书的作者，他已经开始行动了。
Alexander responded and said she believed in my cause. If there was ever a more egregious consequence from the war On drugs, it was, in her view, the sentencing of people to life without parole for non-violent offenses.
Alexander 回应了，然后说她相信我的目标。她认为，如果有比反毒战争更糟糕的后果，那就是把非暴力犯罪的人判处没有假释的终身监禁。
She then connected me with the American Civil Liberties Union, which produced a report on life without parole in the United States, in which I was featured. The report was released in November 2013, and I was granted clemency a month later.
然后她帮我和美国公民自由联盟取得了联系，他们发布了一份关于在美国被判处终身监禁不得假释的报告，其中我也被提到了。这一报告在2013年11月发表，然后我在一个月之后得到赦免。
The New Jersey prison system never offered a reason for why they banned The New Jim Crow, a decision which they undid after an outcry this week. The state administrative code allows prisons to ban a publication, among other reasons, if it “may result in the outbreak of violence.” Did reading the New Jim Crow make me mad? I’m not going to lie: it did. Did it make me want to fight? Yes, it did. But it made me want to fight not with my fist but with my mind, my heart.
新Jersey监狱系统从来没有提供过为什么他们禁止了《新吉姆克劳》，在这周的囚犯反抗之后他们撤销了这一决定。国家管理法律允许监狱禁止出版物，如果出版物“可能会导致爆发暴动”。阅读《新吉姆克劳》使我疯狂了吗？我不想撒谎：是的。这本书导致我想打架吗？是的，我想。但我并不想用我的拳头打架，而是用我的思想，我的心脏。
Thanks to the book, I have dedicated my life to fighting for freedom. Not just my own, which I now have obtained, but that of others serving life sentences. People who are blind to the fact – as I once was – that the war on drugs was never against drugs, but against people of color.
感谢这本书，我决定奉献我的生命去为自由而战。并不仅仅是为了我自己，我现在获得自由了，而是为了其他被终身监禁的人。人们在事实面前装瞎——我曾经也是——反毒战争从来都不是反对毒品的，而是迫害有色人种的。
Perhaps that is the reason why prisons banned the book: because of its power.
也许这就是监狱禁止这本书的原因：因为它的力量。
- Jason Hernandez is the founder of Crack Open The Door, which advocates for nonviolent crack cocaine offenders serving life without parole
- This article was amended on 10 January 2017 to clarify that the New Jersey prison system did not offer a reason for why they banned the New Jim Crow.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/10/new-jim-crow-banned-jail-changed-my-life