From dollars spent in Georgetown, internship hours passed on Capitol Hill and coffees downed in Adams Morgan, students make their mark on our home city. While our campus on a hill could foster isolation among classmates and book stacks, clubs and organizations work with passion and commitment to go beyond the bounds of Northwest, whether through charity drives, volunteering or advocacy.
In this spirit, one AU group has extended its influence to an area less tread by the traditional collegiate - the D.C. jail. In the course of one semester, the Justice Not Jails club collected over 500 books to donate to the jail, which did not have a library before.
The D.C. jail hosts about 2,000 prisoners at any one time, according to the Department of Corrections. There are about an additional 1,000 prisoners in other Department of Corrections facilities. Of all the prisoners, the recidivism rate was 77 percent this year. Among male prisoners, almost 60 percent had not completed past 11th grade in October of this year.
Education for those in jails might not solve greater issues of social isolation and inequalities. But Justice Not Jails deserves recognition for identifying a problem here in the District and then doing something to alleviate it.
While studying how to change the world in books and classrooms, AU shouldn't overlook the problems here at our feet or neglect concrete actions we can take today. Justice Not Jails forces us to remember all parts of this city and the importance of the grassroots for enacting change.
