(Full disclosure: Reentry Central's Managing Editor, Beatrice Codianni, knows both women interviewed in the article below, and is familar with their committment to reform the criminal punishment system.)
From Everyday Democracy:
Karen Garrison had never considered herself an activist. In 1998, she was a cosmetologist and make-up artist. She was also the proud mother of 25-year-old Lamont and Lawrence Garrison, identical twins in their final year at Howard University. That May, Lamont and Lawrence were scheduled to graduate. They were not only their mother’s pride and joy, but also the pride of their DC neighborhood. “Everyone knew that they were going to Howard University and they were going to be lawyers,” Garrison recalled.
One month before the twins donned cap and gown to walk across the stage and receive their diplomas, police showed up at the family’s home and arrested the young men on charges of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. The evidence against them? The word of an informant who had named them in order to reduce his sentence and phone records from the garage where they had brought their uncles’ car to be fixed.
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