Conflict Theory Essay

Though most citizens in the United States would agree that the prison system in the U.S. needs to be amended, do they see the prison system as a way to enforce the racial caste system? At first Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, did not see the prison systems as racially motivated until doing further research. After researching the issue, Alexander found the prison system was a way to oppress African Americans and wrote the novel The New Jim Crow. The New Jim Crow follows the history of the racial caste system and in the novel Alexander comes to the conclusion that the mass incarceration of African American is the New Jim Crow, or in other words a new system of black oppression. Though some might try to refute the idea of mass incarceration of African Americans, Alexander offers a well thought out argument with substantial evidence and data to compellingly link Jim Crow and mass incarceration and proves that it is an issue that should be on the radar of all U.S. citizens.

The purpose of this study is to expose the process of mass incarceration of poor black males, and females increasingly, within the context of a fabricated war on drugs which really is serving to keep the prison population booming by exploiting traditionally disadvantaged minorities in society. Alexander rightfully calls this a ?redesign? of the old racial caste system in America which was supposed to have been destroyed by the civil rights movement. The war on drugs in the 80s merely became the newest vehicle by which to exploit the black community in this country. The War on Drugs is really the rationale for racial control, which targets black men and women and relegates millions of citizens to what Alexander calls a ?second class status (Alexander, 2012).?

The criminal justice system in America is a system designed to work in three distinct steps. The first being to fairly identify those breaking the law, second, create a process through which to both punish and rehabilitate criminals, and lastly integrate them back into society. The current system typically goes unquestioned, as those in the system seem to be deserving of what ever happens while they are in it, even once they have served their prison sentence. It is only upon deeper inspection that we begin to realize the discrimination and unfair tactics used to introduce certain groups of society into the criminal justice system and proceed to trap them there. This is the issue addressed in Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and it is through arrests, sentencing and further upon release from jail that this oppressive system is created and maintained.

The history of Jim Crow is a story of white power, but it is also a story of black survival and resilience. The Jim Crow era lasted nearly a century because of the federal government and there is still work to be done today. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander, is a book about the discrimination of African Americans in today 's society. One of Alexander 's main points is the War on Drugs and how young African American males are targeted and arrested due to racial profiling. Racial profiling, discrimination, and segregation is not as popular as it used to be during the Civil War, however, Michelle Alexander digs deeper, revealing the truth about our government and the racial scandal in the prison systems. The term mass incarceration refers to not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control the labeled criminals both in and out of prison today. The future of the black community itself may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.

The U.S. prison system is one of many great controversies when compared to other correctional systems. America’s prison population has increased by 700% (2.4 million current inmates) since the start of the war on drugs in 1971. As a result of this “war”, people that fall into the racial minority have suffered as a direct consequence of unjust legislation. Our prison system is known for its overrepresentation of minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics. This unfortunately gives these groups of people a perennial negative stigma as a result. I argue that the U.S. prison industrial-complex emphatically displays signs of prejudice and racism and disproportionately incarcerates people of color at a rate higher than whites. Yes, there are skeptics who think “the left’s prison-complex” is wrong about their theory of mass incarceration but the statistical data and concrete facts in support of my argument are very compelling.

The persuasive novel, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander is designed to change your whole perspective of the American Justice System. Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar. She’s won a variety of awards in the field of civil rights and has worked with supreme court judges. Alexander wrote the book with the intention to show that contrary to popular belief, the most despised group in America is criminals. The main focus was the war on drugs and how it affects African-Americans. Former inmates are a group to which discrimination isn’t only accepted but approved in society. In Michelle Alexander’s, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age

Does the US prison system operates as a new Jim Crow system? Or, to put it another way, whether “mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions” that locks black Americans, particularly males, into an undercast. This essay agrees that Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, is correct that the US prison system and mass incarceration operates as a new form of racism. The effects on black Americans of mass incarceration are striking, and yes, mass incarceration does have the result of continuing and reproducing racially biased policies and systems from previous racist generations. These effects are not just felt by the black Americans

Question 1. According to Angela Davis (2003a), social historian Mike Davis was the first to coin the term prison industrial complex, in his research of the California penal system in the 1990s. The prison industrial complex refers to the coinciding relationship between corporations, government, correctional communities, and their collective economic interest in prison expansion and high rates of incarceration (Davis, 2003a). That is, each of these components benefit economically from perpetuating the notion that increasing crime rates are the causation for prison expansion. However, scholars and activists contest this belief, stating that crime rates are decreasing, and that prison expansion is done to increase profits through imprisonment (Davis, 2003a). In this model, criminal justice policy, crime control and the bodies of the marginalized, are organized and managed using a business philosophy focused solely of profitability.

In conclusion, the United States consist of five percent of the world’s population with 25 percent in a prison setting. During the prison boom over half the prison population is African Americans although they only make up 13 percent of the population. Similar to slavery, mass incarceration uses a strategy for economic growth in many communities. As predictor race in the United States, inferior labor market opportunities, racial disparities, and the destruction of family units has helped to maintain economic hierarchy. There is no way to undo the damage that has been done but to target at risk individuals, we as a nation must look beyond our past and reeducate ourselves about race. Due to mass incarceration being so costly, it has gotten a great deal of attention due to economic oppression and the legacy of racism passed down will lead to the reinvention of Jim Crow.

Racial background is a key factor for mass incarceration in this country which leads to segregation. The U.S. holds over 2.2 millions convicts across all of its prisons. Michelle Alexander, a writer and civil rights advocate, mentions that out of that number “more than 60 percent of those in prison come from African American and Latino communities”(Alexander). There’s to be a direct correlation between an individual's race and their likelihood of going to jail. Ethnic minority groups are destined on being sent to jail at one point in their lives. As nowadays, prisons are being used as a tool to segregate minorities from the rest of the American society by dividing them and by placing them in jail. Alexander also mentions that “mass incarnation

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In the case of Angela Y. Davis, she believes that the driving force behind the expansion of prisons is directly correlated to economic incentives that arise from the creation of a cheap labor force and thus propagate her idea of an “Industrial prison complex.” In contrast, Ruth Wilson Gilmore contends that the real underlying problems that contribute to the expansion of prisons in

The United States has always been a country that has functioned on the basis of capitalism and focused on economic gains and stability. The reproduction of the slave system seems to be inextricably connected to race in America, as well as underlying political, social and legal systems that operate in society. Multiple scholars have noted that the social world that is existent today is a result of the economic agenda that is concentrated in politics. The carceral state alone reveals how African Americans in the United States are caught in the institutions that dictate and extort their identities in order to contribute to a system that is set up for their downfall. From slavery, Jim Crow in the south and the ghetto of the north, to the Hyperghetto and prison system of today, the United States has operated through different forms of labor from different, dominant social types that range from slaves to lowly skilled workers to criminals. In order to change the capitalist system that creates loopholes that ensure the imprisonment and lack of fundamental rights and resources for African Americans, it is important to analyze and consider the prison and convict leasing systems, prison abolition and blackness as criminality as a whole.

Conflict theory has been given various meanings over the years. At the beginning of when the theory was first thought of it had an overall focus about society, until years passed when Jetse Sprey shifted the focus onto families (Smith & Hamon, 2012). In light of Jetse Spreys focus on families’ conflict, he felt that conflict theory was necessary to categorize the different types that occur within families. These categories are easier ways to understand the conflicts and be able to untangle what the underlying issue is. There are different perspectives that can be used to understand these issues such as macrosocial and microsocial (Smith &Hamon, 2012). The perspectives can be most beneficial for professionals that have assessed the situation to provide proper help. In terms of divorce, both perspectives could play a part in the unraveling of this event.

These are just some ways that can enhance the conflict simply because the resources is there at no cost to the refugees. One key note to consider when trying to find a solution to this is that human beings rely on interactions and relationship to other people to help them make sense of the world. All of these mechanisms are a consequence of social factors. Therefore, it’s important to look for other responses that allow humanitarian aid to assist the people that need it and protect against escalating the conflict by having their resources support the militant. When militants take advantage of the humanitarian aid supplies, the intentions of the humanitarian aid is being used for something completely different from the values and principles of humanitarian work. Humanitarian aid workers intend to help feed the refugee, not feed the militants that have led to the outset of the crisis (Barber 1997). However, they can’t just categorize and fit everyone into dichotomies without crossing the neutrality and impartiality guidelines of the agencies. In all honesty, personally, it seems that everyone has biased and have their own expectations of the profession they choose to take and as much as they follow the mission of the profession, they still have their own individual faith and beliefs. Because aid is something that is free to refugees, workers may be frustrated in that they aren’t serving the populations that are innocent victims of the crisis.