Zuckerberg: We need to fix our 'unfair, broken' criminal justice system

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is advocating for criminal justice reform. Zuckerberg said we need to fix the “unfair, broken system” in a Facebook post yesterday after he visited San Quentin State Prison with his wife. At the prison they met inmates learning to code:

“Our entire society pays the price for an unfair, broken system … Making our criminal justice system fairer and more effective is a huge challenge for our country. I’m going to keep learning about this topic, but some things are already clear. We can’t jail our way to a just society, and our current system isn’t working,” he wrote in the post.

He said Facebook doesn’t discriminate against potential employees based on criminal records–they aren’t asked to disclose their records on job applications–and that people should be given an opportunity to lead better lives after serving their time.

“Yes, we don’t ask people if they have a criminal record on their job applications. And of course we hire people of any color and nationality. This is 2015,” he wrote in response to a commenter asking if Facebook would employ former prisoners regardless of their race.

Zuckerberg has read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, apparently, and took some of its messages to heart, particularly that the criminal justice system “disproportionately criminalizes and jails Blacks and Latinos,” he said in the post, adding that “More than half the people entering prison live below the poverty line.”