A former BLM activist goes all in on mass incarceration

A former Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist turned conservative content creator supports mass incarceration for violent criminals.

PragerU host and personality Xaviaer DuRousseau told Fox News Digital, "It's very easy to not go to jail. I've been Black for 29 years. I've never even been close to a courtroom in that capacity."

He went on to say that if you obey the law, you can stay out of trouble.

"Don't do a crime. Obey the law, and you'll be able to live a beautiful life," he said.

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DuRousseau, who is from Chicago, was a liberal activist who marched in Black Lives Matter protests. When he was preparing to go on "The Circle" on Netflix as a social justice activist, he wanted to create a series going after conservative speakers like Charlie Kirk and debunking PragerU videos.

But from his research, he "accidentally red-pilled himself" and pulled out of the show and shortly started to speak out about his conservative views. 

Now, DuRousseau shares political and cultural commentary across his social media platforms @Xaviaer, and on his PragerU show "Respectfully, Xaviaer."

One topic he has spoken out about is mass incarceration.

"When it comes to mass incarceration, I do not mean just going and arresting random people on the streets. I mean going and mass incarcerating the criminals that are on the street," he said.

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DuRousseau told Fox News Digital that he wants to address the issues facing the Black community and tackle the stereotypes, arguing that keeping violent criminals behind bars helps more Black communities. 

President Donald Trump's federalization of the D.C. police department and crackdown on Washington crime overwhelmingly benefited Black Americans, who are common victims of violent crimes, crime data found. 

"You go 13 days without a homicide occurring, those homicides would have invariably been very heavily Black," John Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. "And so those lives, you have Blacks who didn't die, who otherwise would have died." 

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DuRousseau pointed out the problem with repeat offenders on the streets.

"When you have the same repeat offenders, that because of progressive district attorneys are allowed right back on the streets, we end up seeing this pattern of the same issues happening over and over and over again," he said.

"If you've robbed people three times, why would I not expect you to rob someone a fourth time?"

On the topic of mass incarceration, the BLM official X account said in a 2021 post, "over-policing and mass incarceration don’t reduce crime or improve lives."

DuRousseau, in realizing his conservative stances, found himself "mortified" over questions about how funds were spent by BLM.

"I'm a firm believer, you trace the money, and you see the priorities. And I started seeing that BLM was taking their money through Act Blue and putting it towards progressive causes and to politicians," he said. "And these politicians were doing absolutely nothing in the Black community."

According to the Black Lives Matter website, "Black Lives Matter imagines a world where Black people across the diaspora thrive, experience joy, and are not defined by their struggles. In pursuing liberation, we envision a future fully divested from police, prisons, and all punishment paradigms and which invests in justice, joy, and culture."

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether senior leaders of the Black Lives Matter organization defrauded donors who contributed tens of millions of dollars during the 2020 protests, two sources familiar with the probe tell Fox News.

The Associated Press first reported that the Justice Department’s ongoing inquiry is focused on the foundation’s handling of donations collected in the wake of the George Floyd killing, when the group saw a surge of more than $90 million in contributions.

DuRousseau said, by addressing repeat offenders, crime can be reduced. 

"If we keep those people in jail or in prison and start actually utilizing law enforcement and the judicial system. We wouldn't see crime drop by at least 50%. So I am pro-mass incarceration of people that are out here committing crimes," he said.

According to Bureau of Justice Statistics and Just Facts, among those who have already entered the prison system, the five-year re-arrest rate for Black individuals is approximately 74% from data collected from 2023-2024 Recidivism Updates. 

The re-arrest rate is high for prisoners across races, according to the report, with American Indians/Alaska natives at 79%, Whites at 70% and Hispanics at 67%.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has touted data showing major drops in homicides, crediting President Donald Trump’s promise to "restore law and order."

"A study from the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) shows that the murder rate across America's largest cities plummeted in 2025 to its lowest level since at least 1900," she said. "Let me repeat to put this in perspective, this marks the largest single-year drop in murders in recorded history."

Fox News' Greg Wehner, David Spunt, and Emma Colton contributed to this report