The Military to Prison Pipeline: Trading One Uniform for Another

Photo by Tyler Rutherford

Like old soldiers around the country, a group of former service members gathered in Crest Hill, Illinois to remember fallen comrades on Memorial Day, 2024. Several months later, The Veteran, a newspaper published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, ran a photo of the event they attended. It shows a multi-generational group of men–white, Black and Latino—lined up proudly between two flags.

In his dispatch to the newspaper, African-American Navy veteran Robert...