Joseph Jazz Hayden : Speaks about mass incarceration

Andrea Mohin, The New York Times By Trip Gabriel Jan. 22, 2024 Joseph Hayden, a lieutenant in a notorious Harlem drug gang who cycled in and out of prison for decades, then turned his life around to become an activist for criminal justice reform and a wellknown figure in Harlem, wielding a camera to document possible police harassment, died on Jan. 6 in Northampton, Pa. He was 82. The cause was a heart attack, his daughter JoAnne HaydenWilliams said. Mr. Hayden was at her home at the time. While behind bars in the 1990s, Mr. Hayden recouped the formal education he had ignored as a street hustler earlier in life, earning bachelors and masters degrees. As I educated myself and developed, I began to see opportunity in other areas, he told The New York Times in a 2009 interview. I started to work on changing the system, on trying to reform the system. Mr. Hayden filed a classaction lawsuit in 2000 to restore voting rights to prisoners and parolees. Hayden v. Pataki, which wa