What may the world pick up from a man sentenced to 40 years in prison about the demoralizing effects of the American criminal justice system?
“I’m asking you to envision a world where men and women aren’t held hostage to their pasts, where misdeeds and mistakes don’t define you for the rest of your life. In an era of record incarcerations and a culture of violence, we can learn to love those who no longer love themselves. Together, we can make things right.”
Explicitly above are the words of Shaka Senghor carved in an imaginary stone slab and dumped into the chambers of our heart, that we may never have the capacity to forget. Shaka is an ex-con but also a prolific writer, the man behind the book; Writing my wrongs; life, death and redemption in an American Prison. Shaka served nineteen years in prison after being charged and convicted with second degree murder. Among those hard and agonizing nineteen years were seven years of solitary confinement. Today, no longer bound in the confinements of a penitentiary, Shaka is a philosopher, writer and a ardent father who has compelled the whole world to take a second and much closer gaze at the criminal justice system in America with a book so powerful in diction and sentiments I regard it; a socio revolutionary utensil.
Shaka Senghor by his book cold not have said in any more appropriate words, how it is for the American country, ever prosperous and powerful and yet damaged by corruption and unfairness regarding the processes and protocol for treating convicts, societal offenders, deviants whose crimes being subject to the biases of a few are deemed unforgiveable. Necessity falls in as to how the nation of America must revisit the scrap books and properly streamline the justice system to alleviate wrong doers from suffering from the pits of hell, on the surface of the earth.
Senghor born in Detroit in the 70s, as every other child at a young age had colorful ambitions about his future. Shaka set out to be doctor to save lives. Little did he know he will be doing otherwise; taking it. After being shot, Shaka turned to the streets, armed himself with a gun until the day he would use it to defend himself from another man. The rest of the events will become a panorama that will slide vivdly in his mind even after many years. He was convicted of second degree murder and slapped with a nail biting 40 years imprisonment.
Senghor’s book documents and exposes the horrors of the justice and rehabilitation system of America and the sham on the part of the world for defining people by their previous misdeeds. He has with his writing exposed political lies and statistical figures that paint a colorful painting from the grim reality of prison life and the unjust justice system. Shaka has since then become an MIT lab fellow and a devoted youth activist encouraging more ex-cons to re-write their transgressions and fit wholesomely into society. Shaka Senghor represents psychological advancements, transformations and a true penance done well to society. He is much to be called the Ben Carson of Crime. Shaka has become so sensational that his TEDx Talk “Why your worst deeds don’t define you” has received over 1.3million views and Oprah has called her conversations with him “one of the best of her life.”