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"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 in
a recent interview with Reuters about his new film, "Roman J.
Israel, Esq."
The movie, written and directed by Dan Gilroy, opens on Friday.
The actor plays the title role of a lawyer with encyclopedic
knowledge.
Washington, recalling some of the people he grew up with, added:
"By the time we got to 13, 14, different things happened. 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. But it’s about the
formative years. You’re not born a criminal."
The cases explored in "Roman J. Israel, Esq." reflect a
"massively important issue in our country," director Gilroy
said.
"Our prison system needs reform at a fundamental level. We have
the highest incarceration rate of any place in the Western world
... It's not racially equal, it's not socio-economically equal,"
he said.
(Reporting by Rollo Ross for Reuters TV; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy
and Matthew Lewis)
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