Academy Award winner Denzel Washington has some common sense advice on preventing black men from entering the prison system. While promoting his movie Roman J. Israel, Esq., Denzel Washington said that black men “can’t blame the system” because they are filling up the nation’s prisons.
Denzel Washington: It Stars With Your Children
“It starts at the home. It starts at home. It starts with how you raise your children,” Washington said in an interview. “If a young man doesn’t have a father figure, he’ll go find a father figure.”
“So you know I can’t blame the system. It’s unfortunate that we make such easy work for them,” he added.
Washington highlighted that this topic is a personal one to him. He has seen it up close with too many black children growing up in fatherless families.
“I grew up with guys who did decades (in prison), and it had as much to do with their fathers not being in their lives as it did to do with any system,” Washington said. “Now I was doing just as much as they were, but they went further.”
“I just didn’t get caught, but they kept going down that road and then they were in the hands of the system,” the award-winning actor continued. “But it’s about the formative years. You’re not born a criminal.”
The breakdown of the family structure certainly does impact many children who grow up to become adults that end up in jail.
Positive Male Role Models Are Important
Washington is correct in that male role models are important and if a positive father figure isn’t in the picture, the child might seek out a male role model with serious flaws.
Washington is currently promoting his movie Roman J. Israel, Esq.
The New York native plays the lead role, a lawyer who takes on the overburdened Los Angeles criminal court system.
You can watch the trailer for Denzel Washington’s movie Roman J. Israel, Esq. below.
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