Apr 15, 2015 01:29 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Grammy-Award winning singer John Legend has launched a multiyear initiative to end mass incarceration.

The 36-year-old R&B crooner announced the campaign, Free America, earlier this week. He is scheduled to visit and perform at a correctional facility on Thursday in Austin, Texas. He will also take part in a press event with state legislators to discuss Texas' criminal justice system, the Associated Press reported.

"We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country," Legend said in an interview, according to the AP. "It's destroying families, it's destroying communities and we're the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration."

Legend will also visit a California state prison and co-host a Politico criminal justice event later this month.

"I'm just trying to create some more awareness to this issue and trying to make some real change legislatively," he said. "And we're not the only ones. There are senators that are looking at this, like Rand Paul and Cory Booker, there are other nonprofits that are looking at this, and I just wanted to add my voice to that."

Despite the initiative being just a few days old, it already has a victory under its belt. The approval of Proposition 47 in California six months ago, which calls for treating shoplifting, forgery, fraud, petty theft and possession of small amounts of drugs --  including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines -- as misdemeanors instead of felonies, could accelerate the campaign's goal achievement.

"Once you have that tag of a felony on your name, it's hard for you to do anything," Legend said. "Getting those reduced to misdemeanors really impacted a lot of lives and we hope to launch more initiatives like that around the country."

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