I went from prisoner to prosecutor. Education would have helped me sooner.
I have experienced the American justice system from nearly every side: juvenile detention, county jail, state prison and later as a prosecutor enforcing its punishments.
From each vantage point, one truth became impossible to ignore.
Crime is rarely the result of a single failure. It is usually the result of multiple institutions failing a child in sequence: a struggling school, an unstable home, a community without consistent mentorship and finally a justice system asked to correct what should have been addressed much earlier.
By the time the criminal justice system intervenes, the real opportunity to change a life has often already passed.
Each April, our country observes Second Chance Month. I know the value of a second chance because I received one. But if we are serious about changing the criminal justice system, the real measure of justice is not how many second chances we give. It is how many people never need one in the first place.
Criminal justice reform is a top-down effort. It’s not enough.
The criminal justice system whispers about rehabilitation.
In practice, it is built for punishment, deterrence and removal. When punishment becomes the primary teacher, the lessons people learn inside prison are rarely the ones society hopes for. Too many people enter prison with a bachelor’s degree in criminal behavior and leave with a doctorate.
The most effective way to make that number smaller is not to reform inside the system.
It is education long before the system ever enters the story.
Criminal justice reform is a top-down effort. We pass new sentencing laws, new policies and new programs.
I support those reforms. But my experience inside the system taught me something important. Reform alone rarely changes lives.
When I became a prosecutor, I believed I might change the system from within. What I discovered was that the most I could often do was slow it.
Reform may slow the system. Education can keep a child from entering it at all.
The justice system reacts to lives that have already been shaped. Education shapes lives before the justice system becomes involved.
Incarceration is reactive. Education is preventive. And prevention is the highest form of public safety.
I am a Black man in America. Across this country, Black men fill prison cells at a rate far beyond our share of the population (13% of the population versus 37% of incarcerated Americans).
Acknowledging that reality is not about turning criminal justice into a racial argument. It is about recognizing where the consequences of institutional failure are most concentrated.
Because Black communities have been disproportionately affected by incarceration, much of my work begins there. But helping those most affected does not divide humanity. It strengthens it. Humanity is indivisible.
Today, I’m investing in my community’s young people.
My belief in education as prevention is not theoretical. It is personal.
After leaving prison and enrolling in Benedict College, I planned to become a teacher. I passed the Praxis exam in South Carolina and began the process of student teaching. But my felony conviction made that impossible.
Collateral consequences are silent until they are not. In that moment, the law made clear that teaching was not a path available to me.
Rather than allow those consequences to dictate my future, I chose another path. I went to law school and became an attorney. For a time, I served as a prosecutor, enforcing the very system I had once lived inside.
Now I am returning to the work I was told I could not do, education. Only this time, I am doing it in my own way.
That is where my work begins.
I started a GED testing center in the same community where I learned to commit the crimes that led to my incarceration. I did it because I knew something others had overlooked. No one else was going there to help bring resources. Too many young people in those neighborhoods leave school early.
Those who leave early often become parents who were never given the tools to guide their own children. Over time, the cycle repeats, generation after generation. When it continues long enough, everyone begins pointing fingers until the criminal justice system is asked to absorb the consequences.
Today, I am working to bring mentoring programs into school districts across Georgia. West Georgia Technical College and I are partnering to make higher education more visible and attainable in underresourced communities. My goal is to help people see farther so they can live better. I am also advocating for inmates in Coweta County Jail to be able to earn their GED while still inside.
Education has the power to interrupt cycles that punishment alone never will.
None of this eliminates the need for prisons. Some people commit acts serious enough that society must protect itself. But prison was never designed to do the work that education can do. It removes people after harm has already occurred. The justice system whispers about rehabilitation. Education declares what is possible long before the system ever becomes involved.
Second chances matter. They changed my life.
But the work of building lives does not belong to prisons. It belongs to education.
A society that relies on second chances has already waited too long.
James White III is a Georgia attorney and former prosecutor.
