by Jeroslyn JoVonn
February 14, 2024
A brand new BET+ movie tells the real-life story of 1 girl who fell sufferer to the draconian legal guidelines that gas America’s Struggle on Medication.
A brand new movie is coming to BET+ that tells the real-life story of a girl who fell sufferer to the Draconian legal guidelines that gas America’s Struggle on Medication and the continued rise of the Black ladies’s jail inhabitants.
Kelley Kali’s Kemba premieres on BET+ on Feb. 22. The made-for-TV film tells the true story of Kemba Smith, a girl who’s charged as a co-conspirator of her faculty boyfriend’s drug-trafficking crimes and sentenced to 24 and a half years in federal jail regardless of being seven months pregnant, Yahoo Information reviews.
Smith was a sheltered faculty scholar who had by no means gotten into any authorized hassle and by no means bought or used medicine. She was, nonetheless, a sufferer of home violence by the hands of her boyfriend, Peter Corridor. Regardless of her clear report, federal prosecutors charged her with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, and in 1994, she was sentenced to almost 25 years with out the potential for parole.
Seven months pregnant, a sufferer of home violence, and a nonviolent drug offender, Smith’s case revealed the arbitrary and unjust character of federal necessary sentencing tips that prevented federal judges from taking the distinctive circumstances of every accused particular person under consideration, as famous by the NAACP Authorized Protection Fund.
The Authorized Protection Fund (LDF) finally acquired concerned with Smith’s case after studying concerning the many injustices she suffered. In 2000, LDF efficiently obtained clemency for Smith after she served six and a half years of her jail sentence.
However even within the 24 years since her launch, statistics present Black ladies are nonetheless incarcerated on drug fees at alarming charges. In accordance with The Sentencing Undertaking, the variety of incarcerated ladies has risen 525% between 1980 and 2021.
An April 2023 research credited the continued rise within the ladies’s jail inhabitants to “extra expansive legislation enforcement efforts, stiffer drug sentencing legal guidelines, and post-conviction limitations to re-entry that uniquely have an effect on ladies.” The numbers are extra staggering when trying on the inhabitants of Black ladies in jail. A 2020 census discovered that whereas Black ladies comprise simply 7.7% of the full U.S. inhabitants and 15.3% of the inhabitants of ladies, they nonetheless make up 29% of incarcerated ladies.
The LDF stays dedicated to collaborating with Smith and the Kemba Smith Basis to convey consideration to essential issues throughout the felony justice system. Smith’s e book Poster Little one: The Kemba Smith Story recounts her harrowing journey by means of home abuse, injustice, disenfranchisement, and the challenges of re-entering society. Kemba will probably be obtainable to stream on BET+ on Feb. 22, 2024.
