To the editor:

The moral fitness of our community is on the ballot being mailed out next month, which calls on us to vote on the wisdom of a massive expansion of the Douglas County Jail.

Already, the proportion of people incarcerated from Douglas County is higher than in oppressive regimes like China or Saudi Arabia. African-American incarceration rates are far worse here in a community founded by abolitionists on principles of racial justice. What a disgrace to our progressive civic roots that routinely about 20 percent of inmates at the Douglas County jail are black, compared with about 5 percent of residents in Douglas County.

Let’s critically question the broken system behind racial disparity at the current jail, not thoughtlessly build a bigger one.

Under the #JailNo banner, groups opposing expansion of mass incarceration locally say the $44 million in new sales and property taxes to expand the jail instead could finance another new library, a behavioral health center, a teen center and doubling of funds for local legal aid, technical training, United Way, housing assistance and district courts.

Imagine what we could do with the $165 million it will cost to run a bigger jail for two decades.

According to Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow,” today in the U.S. more African Americans live under correctional control than were enslaved in 1850. Given these facts, our abolitionist founders would be appalled by a jail expansion. For Douglas County to stay true to its character, voters must reject this horrendous jail plan.