In 2009, the United Nations officially made his birthday “Nelson Mandela Day.” Themba Hadebe/Associated Press

Today, July 18, would have been Nelson Mandela’s 105th birthday.

In 2009, the United Nations officially made Mandela’s birthday “Nelson Mandela Day” to honor the man whose courage and ethics have inspired people around the world. Though Mandela is no longer with us we can celebrate his life and values. He taught us much, but we all have much to learn and to do.

Nelson Mandela was born into the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, South Africa, studied law and as a result of his outspoken condemnation of the treatment of Black citizens in South Africa under apartheid, spent 27 years in prison. Many of those years were in solitary confinement. That experience would have broken the spirit of many, but for Mandela it only strengthened his commitment to justice and to eliminating the state-sponsored brutality of imprisonment that he himself experienced.

One of the things that resulted in Mandela’s lengthy imprisonment is something that often accompanies practices that are unjust or cruel, the belief that if the state is doing it, it must be the best option. This was what made slavery acceptable in this country, later the denying of civil rights, and still later what became known as “Jim Crow laws.”

Currently this attitude of “the best we can do” seems to justify the fact that our country imprisons more people than any nation on earth.

On Mandela Day there are about 1.2 million people incarcerated in state and federal long-term prisons, where they are serving sentences typically much longer than those of other countries. That prison statistic does not include those admitted to jails, where conditions may be much worse.

In 2022, the 2,850 local jails scattered across the country held about 658,000 people on any given day. But that number pales in comparison to the millions of people admitted to jails every year – more than 10.3 million jail admissions in the United States were reported in 2019. And those who are carried into the bowels of this system are disproportionately Black, Brown, poor and, almost unthinkably, have medical illnesses.

While Maine is better than many other states when it comes to the conditions behind bars, the conditions in facilities here remain like the conditions that Mandela experienced. There are people in Maine prisons and jails that are kept in solitary isolation for long periods as he was, including people with substance use disorders or disorders of mental health. The ability to sustain such treatment without severe, lasting damage is rare, but the practice continues to be used in a facility near you. Of course, the people experiencing these conditions are conveniently kept out of our sight until they emerge into our communities irrevocably damaged by their experiences inside and unlikely to become good neighbors.

When friends or family of the incarcerated carry the case to the Legislature, those efforts are often met with defeat – as they were this year. Why would we continue this cycle of cruelty that is marked by such poor results and is perpetuated in our name and with our money? The answer is clear: It must be because the people of Maine don’t know the facts.

If Nelson Mandela were indeed with us to celebrate this special day and had the power to enact his values in our prison system, it is virtually certain that he would seek to dismantle our system as it currently exists and create a more restorative system that would be healthier for all. Let us honor Nelson Mandela on his special day by committing ourselves to this worthy task. Our prison system is not working for the benefit of the people. We can and must do better. You must help.