On the path that American children travel to adulthood¹, two institutions oversee² the journey. The first is the one we hear a lot about: college. Some of you may remember the excitement that you felt when you first set off for college. Some of you may be in college right now and you're feeling this excitement at this very moment.

美国的孩子们长大成人的道路上，有两个机构在这段旅程上至关重要。第一个是大家经常听到的大学。某些人可能还记得当你第一次进入大学时的兴奋的感觉。你们中的某些可能现在就在大学并且正在享受那份兴奋。

 

College has some shortcomings. It's expensive; it leaves young people in debt. But all in all, it's a pretty good path. Young people emerge from college with pride and with great friends and with a lot of knowledge about the world. And perhaps most importantly, a better chance in the labor³ market than they had before they got there.

大学有很多弊端 学费昂贵，所以年轻人负债累累 但总而言之，这是一条康庄大道。年轻人从校园毕业，带着自豪与友情。和许多关于这个世界的知识或许更重要的是上大学使得他们能有更好的就业机会。

 

Today I want to talk about the second institution overseeing the journey from childhood to adulthood in the United States. And that institution is prison. Young people on this journey are meeting with probation⁴ officers instead of with teachers. They're going to court dates instead of to class. Their junior year abroad is instead a trip to a state correctional facility. And they're emerging from their 20s not with degrees in business and English, but with criminal records.

今天我想讨论的是第二个机构 在美国，贯穿了从童年到成年的整个人生经历 那个机构便是监狱 在这段旅程上,相伴着年轻人的 是感化官而不是教师 去法庭受审而不是去教室上课 他们的大三留学之旅是去州立管教所 当他们20多岁时 没有商科的或英语的学位 有的只是犯罪记录

 

This institution is also costing us a lot, about 40,000 dollars a year to send a young person to prison in New Jersey⁵. But here, taxpayers⁶ are footing the bill and what kids are getting is a cold prison cell and a permanent mark against them when they come home and apply for work.

这个机构同样花费甚多 在新泽西，送一个年轻人到监狱的花费 一年要大约4万美元 但是这是纳税人买的单 而孩子们得到的只是一个冰冷的牢房单间 和一个永久的印记，阻碍着他们回归家庭 或者寻找工作

 

There are more and more kids on this journey to adulthood than ever before in the United States and that's because in the past 40 years, our incarceration⁷ rate has grown by 700 percent. I have one slide for this talk. Here it is. Here's our incarceration rate, about 716 people per 100,000 in the population. Here's the OECD countries.

越来越多的孩子在这条路上长大成人 尤其在美国，这是因为在过去的四十年里 我们服刑率已经增长了700% 我制作了一张幻灯片 看这儿 这是我们的服刑率 每十万人就有716人服刑 这是其他OECD（经合组织）成员国家的情况

 

What's more, it's poor kids that we're sending to prison, too many drawn⁸ from African-American and Latino communities so that prison now stands firmly between the young people trying to make it and the fulfillment of the American Dream. The problem's actually a bit worse than this 'cause we're not just sending poor kids to prison,

更为重要的是，被送入监狱的孩子往往 家境贫寒 他们大多来自非裔美国人和拉丁裔社区 以至于监狱成为了想要成功的年轻人 实现美国梦的障碍 问题是事实更为糟糕 因为我们不只是把贫困的孩子送入监狱

 

we're saddling poor kids with court fees, with probation and parole restrictions⁹, with low-level warrants, we're asking them to live in halfway¹⁰ houses and on house arrest, and we're asking them to negotiate a police force that is entering poor communities of color, not for the purposes of promoting public safety, but to make arrest counts, to line city coffers.

我们还给他们加上了许多沉重的枷锁，比如诉讼费的负担 比如感化和假释的限制 比如轻微的犯罪通缉 我们让他们待在过渡教习所或者软禁在家 我们让他们和警察交涉 而当这些警察要进入有色人种的社区 不是为了改善公共安全 而是为了政绩去保证逮捕数量

 

This is the hidden underside to our historic experiment in punishment: young people worried that at any moment, they will be stopped, searched and seized. Not just in the streets, but in their homes, at school and at work.

这就是关于我们印象中的惩戒措施的 不为人知的一面 年轻人总是担心随时会被截停、搜身和逮捕 无论是在街上还是在家 在学校还是在工作

 

I got interested in this other path to adulthood when I was myself a college student attending the University of Pennsylvania in the early 2000s. Penn sits within a historic African-American neighborhood.

大约2000年年初的时候 当时我自己在宾夕法尼亚大学上学 我对这种别样的人生成长轨迹 产生了兴趣 大学坐落在一个历史悠久的非裔社区旁

 

So you've got these two parallel journeys going on simultaneously¹¹: the kids attending this elite¹², private university, and the kids from the adjacent neighborhood, some of whom are making it to college, and many of whom are being shipped to prison.

所以在这里你能同时看到两条平行的人生轨迹 一边是在这所精英的私立大学上学的孩子 另外一边是在附近社区的孩子 他们中有一些也在努力去读大学 但是他们中的大多数却身陷囹圄

 

In my sophomore¹³ year, I started tutoring a young woman who was in high school who lived about 10 minutes away from the university. Soon, her cousin came home from a juvenile¹⁴ detention¹⁵ center.

在我大二的时候，我开始辅导一位高中的年轻姑娘 她住在离大学10分钟路程的地方 不久，她的表弟（堂弟）从少年拘留所回到家

 

He was 15, a freshman¹⁶ in high school. I began to get to know him and his friends and family, and I asked him what he thought about me writing about his life for my senior thesis in college. This senior thesis became a dissertation¹⁷ at Princeton and now a book.

他当时15岁，上高中一年级 我开始了解他以及他的朋友们和家庭 我问他能否在我的毕业论文中 讲述他的生活 这篇论文也成为了我在普林斯顿的博士论文 现在则集结成书

 

By the end of my sophomore year, I moved into the neighborhood and I spent the next six years trying to understand what young people were facing as they came of age. The first week I spent in this neighborhood, I saw two boys, five and seven years old, play this game of chase, where the older boy ran after the other boy.

在我大学二年级结束的时候 我搬进了这个社区，而且花了6年时间。去尝试理解年轻人在成长中要面对的是什么 在这个社区中生活的第一周 我看到了两个男孩，一个5岁一个7岁 在玩一个追逐游戏 大一点的男孩在追另外一个。

 

He played the cop. When the cop caught up to the younger boy, he pushed him down, handcuffed him with imaginary handcuffs, took a quarter out of the other child's pocket, saying, "I'm seizing that." He asked the child if he was carrying any drugs or if he had a warrant. Many times, I saw this game repeated,

他演“警察” 当“警察”抓到了小一点的男孩 他把小男孩按到身下 假装用手铐把他铐起来 然后从小男孩的口袋里掏出一个25分硬币 说到：“这个归我了” 他问他是否带了毒品 是否在被通缉 我经常看到孩子们玩儿这个游戏

 

sometimes children would simply give up running, and stick their bodies flat against the ground with their hands above their heads, or flat up against a wall. Children would yell at each other, "I'm going to lock you up, I'm going to lock you up and you're never coming home!" Once I saw a six-year-old child pull another child's pants down and try to do a cavity search.

有时候，孩子们只是简单的放弃逃跑 平躺在地上 双手高举过头顶，或是将双手靠在墙上 孩子们彼此大叫 “我要把你锁起来， 我要把你锁起来让你再也回不了家！“ 有一次我看到一个6岁小孩把 另外一个小孩的裤子扒掉 然后去试着去做肛门搜查

 

In the first 18 months that I lived in this neighborhood, I wrote down every time I saw any contact between police and people that were my neighbors. So in the first 18 months, I watched the police stop pedestrians¹⁸ or people in cars, search people, run people's names, chase people through the streets, pull people in for questioning, or make an arrest every single day, with five exceptions.

在住在这个社区的最初的18个月 我记下了所有我看到的 我的邻居与警察的接触 所以在这最初的18个月 我看到了警察截停行人或者在车里的人 搜查他们，询问他们的姓名 在街上追逐他们 抓他们去问话 每天都要抓一个人，只有5天例外

 

Fifty-two times, I watched the police break down doors, chase people through houses or make an arrest of someone in their home. Fourteen times in this first year and a half, I watched the police punch, choke, kick, stomp¹⁹ on or beat young men after they had caught them.

我看到警察破门而入多达52次 穿过很多屋子去追捕 或者在某人家中将其逮捕 我看到警察在逮捕这些年轻人之后 又用极端暴力对待他们 在这一年半时间中我一共看到14次

 

Bit by bit, I got to know two brothers, Chuck and Tim. Chuck was 18 when we met, a senior in high school. He was playing on the basketball team and making C's and B's. His younger brother, Tim, was 10. And Tim loved Chuck; he followed him around a lot, looked to Chuck to be a mentor²⁰.

逐渐的，我和两兄弟熟悉起来 查克和提姆 我们相识时查克18岁，是一个高四学生 他在一个篮球队打球，大部分成绩是C和B 他的小弟弟，提姆，当时10岁 提姆很喜欢查克，经常跟着他屁股后面转 把查克当成他的导师

 

They lived with their mom and grandfather in a two-story row home with a front lawn and a back porch. Their mom was struggling with addiction²¹ all while the boys were growing up. She never really was able to hold down a job for very long. It was their grandfather's pension that supported the family, not really enough to pay for food and clothes and school supplies for growing boys. The family was really struggling.

他们和母亲与爷爷（姥爷）住在一起 他们住在一个两层楼的联排房屋里，前面有草坪，后面有走廊 他们成长过程中，他们的母亲一直都为毒瘾所扰 她从来没能有个长期的稳定工作 是他们祖父（外祖父）的退休金在支撑这个家 其实这不足以支付孩子们的食品和衣服 还有学习开销 真的是在贫困线上挣扎

 

So when we met, Chuck was a senior in high school. He had just turned 18. That winter, a kid in the schoolyard called Chuck's mom a crack whore. Chuck pushed the kid's face into the snow and the school cops charged him with aggravated²² assault. The other kid was fine the next day, I think it was his pride that was injured more than anything.

当我们认识的时候，查克正在上高中最后一年 他刚刚满18岁 那个冬天，一个操场上的孩子 叫查克的妈妈”嗑药的婊子“ 查克把那孩子的脸按到积雪里 然后校警以严重袭击的罪名将他逮捕 然而骂人的孩子第二天没什么事 我想主要是他的自尊心受到了伤害

 

But anyway, since Chuck was 18, this agg. assault case sent him to adult county jail on State Road in northeast Philadelphia, where he sat, unable to pay the bail²³ -- he couldn't afford it -- while the trial dates dragged on and on and on through almost his entire senior year.

但是无论如何，查克已经年满18岁 他因为袭击案被送到成人监狱 位于费城东北部的州立公路旁 他因为无力支付保释金被关在那---他根本就付不起 当时审判日被一拖再拖 几乎占了他高中最后的一整年

 

Finally, near the end of this season, the judge on this assault case threw out most of the charges and Chuck came home with only a few hundred dollars' worth of court fees hanging over his head. Tim was pretty happy that day.

最后，在接近这个季节末的时候 法官驳回了大部分关于这起袭击案的指控 查克回家了 但是他也欠下了数百美元的诉讼费 提姆那天很开心

 

The next fall, Chuck tried to re-enroll as a senior, but the school secretary told him that he was then 19 and too old to be readmitted. Then the judge on his assault case issued him a warrant for his arrest because he couldn't pay the 225 dollars in court fees that came due a few weeks after the case ended. Then he was a high school dropout²⁴ living on the run.

第二年秋天，查克试着去重新注册高中四年级 但是学校秘书告诉他 他已经19岁了，已经超龄而没有资格复读了 紧接着，负责他袭击案的法官又签署了一份他的通缉 因为他没有付225美元的诉讼费 在他案子结束后的几个星期后发出 所以他从高中辍学在逃去躲避追捕

 

Tim's first arrest came later that year after he turned 11. Chuck had managed to get his warrant lifted and he was on a payment plan for the court fees and he was driving Tim to school in his girlfriend's car.

提姆第一次被捕是在那一年的晚些时候 那时他刚满11岁 那时查克的通缉刚被取消 然后他要以分期付款的方式支付他的诉讼费 当时他用他女友的车载提姆到学校

 

So a cop pulls them over, runs the car, and the car comes up as stolen in California. Chuck had no idea where in the history of this car it had been stolen. His girlfriend's uncle bought it from a used car auction²⁵ in northeast Philly. Chuck and Tim had never been outside of the tri-state, let alone to California.

一个警察把他们截停，调查车的来源 发现车是在加州被盗的 查克根本就不知道这辆车其实是赃物 是他女友的叔叔在一个费城东北的 二手车拍卖会上买的 查克和提姆从来没有离开过附近超过三个州 更别提加州了

 

But anyway, the cops down at the precinct charged Chuck with receiving stolen property. And then a juvenile judge, a few days later, charged Tim, age 11, with accessory to receiving a stolen property and then he was placed on three years of probation. With this probation sentence hanging over his head,

但是尽管如此，当地辖区的警察 还是以窝赃的罪名起诉了查克 几天后，一个青少年犯罪法官 起诉了11岁的提姆 作为窝赃的从犯 然后他被判三年的缓刑 因为背负缓刑的罪名

 

Chuck sat his little brother down and began teaching him how to run from the police. They would sit side by side on their back porch looking out into the shared alleyway and Chuck would coach Tim how to spot undercover cars, how to negotiate a late-night police raid, how and where to hide.

查克要他弟弟坐下来 开始教他怎么摆脱警察 他们会肩并肩坐在他们房后的走廊 望着公共小巷的深处 查克会叫提姆怎样辩认出伪装的警车 怎样和深夜巡逻的警察交涉，还有哪里能躲避

 

I want you to imagine for a second what Chuck and Tim's lives would be like if they were living in a neighborhood where kids were going to college, not prison. A neighborhood like the one I got to grow up in. Okay, you might say. But Chuck and Tim, kids like them, they're committing crimes! Don't they deserve to be in prison?

我想让你们想象一下 如果查克和提姆住在 邻居孩子都能去大学读书，而不是去监狱的社区里 就像我长大的社区 他们的生活会是怎样？ 好的，你也许会说 但是像查克和提姆这样的孩子，他们确实犯罪了！ 难道他们不该去蹲监狱吗？

 

Don't they deserve to be living in fear of arrest? Well, my answer would be no. They don't. And certainly not for the same things that other young people with more privilege are doing with impunity²⁶. If Chuck had gone to my high school, that schoolyard fight would have ended there, as a schoolyard fight. It never would have become an aggravated assault case.

难道他们不该生活在被捕的恐惧之中吗？ 我的答案是不该 他们不应该被这样对待 他们不应该因为做了和其他年轻人一样的事而被这样对待 比他们条件更好的年轻人做同样的事却免受惩罚 如果查克去了我的高中 那次操场打架也只会作为一次操场打架 而止于学校内部 根本就不会成为一起严重袭击案件

 

Not a single kid that I went to college with has a criminal record right now. Not a single one. But can you imagine how many might have if the police had stopped those kids and searched their pockets for drugs as they walked to class? Or had raided their frat parties in the middle of the night?

从来就没有任何一位我的大学同学 现在有犯罪记录 从来没有一个 但是你能想象如果警察截停这些上学路上的孩子 从他们的口袋中搜查毒品 或者在半夜突击检查他们的朋友聚会，他们会留下多少犯罪记录吗？

 

Okay, you might say. But doesn't this high incarceration rate partly account for our really low crime rate? Crime is down. That's a good thing. Totally, that is a good thing. Crime is down. It dropped precipitously in the '90s and through the 2000s.

好的，你也许会说 但是高服刑率 不是一定程度上降低了犯罪率吗？ 犯罪率下降了，这是好事。 没错，犯罪率下降是好事。 从90年代到本世纪初，犯罪率大幅下降

 

But according to a committee of academics convened²⁷ by the National Academy of Sciences last year, the relationship between our historically high incarceration rates and our low crime rate is pretty shaky. It turns out that the crime rate goes up and down irrespective of how many young people we send to prison.

但是根据一个由国家科学院去年召开的 学术会议的测算 我们历史上高服刑率 和我们的低犯罪率的关系并不十分牢靠 犯罪率的高低 和我们送多少年轻人进监狱并无关系

 

We tend to think about justice in a pretty narrow way: good and bad, innocent and guilty. Injustice²⁸ is about being wrongfully convicted. So if you're convicted of something you did do, you should be punished for it. There are innocent and guilty people, there are victims and there are perpetrators. Maybe we could think a little bit more broadly than that.

我们总是在一个狭窄的范围下思考正义 好或者坏，无罪或者有罪 不正义就是被错误的定罪 所以如果你因为自己做过的事被定罪 你就应该受到相应的惩罚 总是用无辜的和有罪的人，总是有被害者和犯罪者，如果我们能再思考地更广一点

 

Right now, we're asking kids who live in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, who have the least amount of family resources, who are attending the country's worst schools, who are facing the toughest time in the labor market, who are living in neighborhoods where violence is an everyday problem, we're asking these kids to walk the thinnest possible line -- to basically never do anything wrong.

现在，我们却要求这些住在最恶劣的社区的小孩 他们只有最少的家庭资源 他们上着全国最差的学校 他们面对着劳动力市场的最艰难的时刻 他们住在每天都有暴力问题发生的社区 我们却要求他们实现几乎不可能完成的事情 不允许一丝错误

 

Why are we not providing support to young kids facing these challenges? Why are we offering only handcuffs, jail time and this fugitive²⁹ existence? Can we imagine something better? Can we imagine a criminal justice system that prioritizes recovery, prevention, civic³⁰ inclusion, rather than punishment? (Applause)

为什么我们不提供给这些孩子 面对这些挑战的帮助呢？ 为什么我们提供的只有手铐，监狱和逃亡生活呢？ 我们就不能想象一点更好的事情吗？ 难道我们就不能想象一个重视重归社会 重视预防犯罪和城市包容性 而不是只重视惩罚的司法系统吗？

 

A criminal justice system that acknowledges the legacy³¹ of exclusion³² that poor people of color in the U.S. have faced and that does not promote and perpetuate³³ those exclusions³⁴. (Applause) And finally, a criminal justice system that believes in black young people, rather than treating black young people as the enemy to be rounded up.

这个司法系统 承认有色人种在美国被隔离和疏远的历史 并且不会再促进和保持这种隔离和疏远。最终，这个司法系统更信任这些黑人青年 而不是不是把这些黑人青年当作敌人来对待

 

The good news is that we already are. A few years ago, Michelle Alexander wrote "The New Jim Crow," which got Americans to see incarceration as a civil rights issue of historic proportions in a way they had not seen it before.

好消息是，我们已经在努力之中 几年前，米歇尔亚历山大撰写了 《The New Jim Crow》这本书 这本书让美国人认识到 服刑率在历史上也是一个重要的人权问题，而且是前所未见的

 

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder³⁵ have come out very strongly on sentencing reform, on the need to address racial disparity in incarceration. We're seeing states throw out Stop and Frisk as the civil rights violation³⁶ that it is. We're seeing cities and states decriminalize possession of marijuana.

总统奥巴马和首席检察官埃里克候得对于量刑改革 以及在量刑中的种族不平等 十分的重视 我们看到有些州开始禁止截查和搜身 因为这些侵犯了人权 我们看到有些州和城市拥有大麻合法化

 

New York, New Jersey and California have been dropping their prison populations, closing prisons, while also seeing a big drop in crime. Texas has gotten into the game now, also closing prisons, investing in education. This curious coalition³⁷ is building from the right and the left, made up of former prisoners and fiscal³⁸ conservatives,of civil rights activists³⁹ and libertarians, of young people taking to the streets to protest police violence against unarmed black teenagers, and older, wealthier people -- some of you are here in the audience -- pumping big money into decarceration initiatives In a deeply divided Congress, the work of reforming our criminal justice system is just about the only thing that the right and the left are coming together on.

他们是纽约，新泽西和加利福尼亚 这些措施减少了他们的服刑人数，关闭了一些监狱 但是于此同时犯罪率也大幅地降低了 德克萨斯也开始了相同的举措 同样关闭监狱，投资教育 一个从左派到右派的奇异的联盟正在建立起来成员有前服刑人员和财政保守派 还有人权活动家和自由主义者 年轻人走上大街去抗议那些 暴力对待手无寸铁的黑人青少年的警察 而年长的，富有的人—— 有一些是我们这里的观众—— 也捐助了巨额资金到这些反监禁的活动中 在严重分离的国会司法系统变革的工作 也是唯一一个能让左派和右派 走到一起的工作

 

I did not think I would see this political moment in my lifetime. I think many of the people who have been working tirelessly to write about the causes and consequences of our historically high incarceration rates did not think we would see this moment in our lifetime. The question for us now is, how much can we make of it? How much can we change?

我并不认为在我的有生之年能 看到这个政治时刻的到来 我想很多正在不止疲倦的书写 关于我们历史性的高服刑率 的起因和结果的人 也不会认为能在有生之年能看到这个时刻的来临 现在我们的问题是，我们究竟能达成多少目标？ 我们究竟能改变到何种程度？

 

I want to end with a call to young people, the young people attending college and the young people struggling to stay out of prison or to make it through prison and return home.

最后，我想对年轻人呼吁 对正在上大学的年轻人 对正在监狱外挣扎抗争的年轻人 对服刑结束重返家庭的年轻人

 

It may seem like these paths to adulthood are worlds apart, but the young people participating in these two institutions conveying us to adulthood, they have one thing in common: Both can be leaders in the work of reforming our criminal justice system. Young people have always been leaders in the fight for equal rights, the fight for more people to be granted dignity and a fighting chance at freedom.

这也许看上去是几种完全不同的成人之路 但是年轻人参加这两种机构 最终成人 他们有着共同点： 他们都可以成为重建我们司法系统的工作的领导者。青年们永远都是为了公平权利的斗争 为了更多的人赢得尊严的斗争 为了自由的机会的斗争的领导者

 

The mission for the generation of young people coming of age in this, a sea-change moment, potentially, is to end mass incarceration and build a new criminal justice system, emphasis on the word justice.Thanks.

赋予给这一代青年的使命 在这个即将到来的时代，历史性的时刻， 终结高服刑率，建造一个能充分表达 “正义”这个词的全新的司法系统.谢谢。

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