Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Beehouse Justice Initiative is launching with PBS stations this Friday, July 9 narrated by Chris Rock. Focused on the injustice of cannabis prosecution, Beehouse Justice and Matador Content present the short film series Cannabis and Incarceration, directed by Ezra Paek.
The first film in the series, “Spotlight On: Last Prisoner Project,” can be found here.
The Beehouse Justice Initiative was founded with the mission to heal some of the harms caused by disparate enforcement of cannabis prohibition. More than half of all drug arrests in the United States are for cannabis possession, and despite roughly equal usage rates, Blacks are almost four times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana. Cannabis arrests can preclude getting or keeping a job, living in public housing, or getting or keeping a scholarship, and these second-order effects have disastrous impacts on individuals and communities.
The Beehouse Justice Initiative focuses on organizations that work to keep non-violent offenders out of jail, help the incarcerated, and recently incarcerated, become more productive, and restore hope to disparately impacted communities.