Convict-Lease System Analysis

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.

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

The Prison Industrial Complex flourished during the Reagan Administration. It was a way for Corporate America to use cheap prison labor to make huge profits for their corporations. With 42% of the prison population being black and only 13% of the country being African American, it’s easy to realize that the government was exploiting the black prisoners with cheap labor, no union representation, and huge profits that did not get passed on to the prisoners. According to author Michelle Alexander, there are more blacks in prison today than there were enslaved in 1850. This is what she refers to as “The New Jim Crow.” In her argument, she states: “In this era of colorblindness, it was not socially permissible to use race as a tool for disfranchisement, marginalization and discrimination” (Module 9/ Page 6).

It is commonly believed that after the onset of the Civil War, Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was the key driver to freeing the slaves of the south. After the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Constitutional amendments were passed which aided newly freed slaves in being equally treated under the law, or so the story goes. The fact of the matter is that even after the Emancipation Proclamation and after the amendments, slavery in the United States was still “legal” and not only that, but it took on a much different form. The institution of slavery changed from having the direct enslavement of blacks, to the United States legal and prison system enslaving blacks. Yet, the enslavement itself was changed as black convicts

As a result of these drug laws the use of drugs decreased slightly, but the number of African American men incarcerated for drug crimes skyrocketed to more than 300 %, The number of African Americans arrested for drug abuse went from 112,784 to 452,574 in a short period of time. Young African American males were almost 9 times more likely to be incarcerated than their Caucasian counterparts. With considerably long sentence, and having to serve out a minimum of 85% of their time, these men have absolutely nothing to turn to. No longer was the goal of the penal system to reform these misguided men. Now the main priority of the prison system was to punish. Instead of giving these men a basic education, and helping them become productive members of society once they were released, Congress cut funding to educational programs, and actually tried to pass an act known as the No Frills Prison Act, which funded prisons to “prevent luxurious conditions.” To make things worse, South Carolina prisons banned basic necessities out of spite,such as the air conditioners.

The United states has a mass incarceration problem with 1 out of 4 of the total population being incarcerated. With the highest incarceration rate in America makes up five percent of the world's population but holds twenty-five percent of the world's prisoners.The rate of incarceration has increased greatly over the last 50 years and continues to grow .The prison systems have become obstreperous, expensive, and destructive to society. African Americans account for fifty six percent of the people incarcerated. The discrimination of black men in the justice system has escalated in the last 50 years causing mass incarceration, broken family systems with distrust of the government, and increased mental health problems in the black community.

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.

“As the walls of the ghetto shook and threatened to crumble, the walls of the prison were correspondingly extended, enlarged and fortified. . .” (Wacquant 2002:52). In his account, Wacquant implies that once ghettos began to disperse, American society required a new place for African Americans to reside: prison. Reading this article, one would never know that African Americans existed outside ghettos and prisons. The concept of African Americans in suburbia or anywhere of decent living standards is ignored completely. There is no dispute over the “racially skewed mass imprisonment” (Wacquant 2002:56) of black men and women, but not only African Americans inhabit ghettos and the “inner city.” However, the “centuries-old

The ‘Prison Industrial Complex’ signifies a criminal justice system in America that has been significantly changed during the advance development over the last 30 years with further focus on the interests of the private sector in the crime industry (Wood, 2003). The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) articulates the interests that use criminalisation, policing, surveillance and imprisonment as a solution to the social, economical and political issues of the society (Wood, 2003).

The American journey begins with slavery, transitions to violent oppression and segregation, and presently exists in a state aptly stated in the text of Golash-Boza, “Writing at the turn of the century, W.E.B. Dubois likened the prison system to “slavery in private hands””(2015, p.295). This further defines the shadow that slavery has cast upon the legacy of our nation. The bondage of the American prison system continues to separate African American families and stagnate the growth and development of the black community as a

But it is exclusively the ongoing legacy of African enslavement – the identification of blackness with inferiority and whiteness with its opposite - that persists and potentially disrupts every political and economic struggle in the United States today, whether it be for a living wage, for civil liberties, for the right to organize, for education and health care, for gender equality, for equal rights of immigrants, for “fair” taxation of wealth, for human rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people – everything. It is not accidental that the majority of the men and women in prison today are African American, and most of the rest are Latino. The so-called criminal justice system and the prison-industrial complex maintain a new form of slavery.

What is the main goal that our jail system is trying to portray? The majority would have the urge to speak that the purpose of the system is to punish, target, and make an example out of those who have committed crimes. The most important purpose of prison systems should be to rehabilitate criminals into the public so prisons can have a life changing attitude towards the men or women that have reentered in the public. Utilizing discipline to restore a criminal is similar to punishing a child for been bad in school. Every discipline action is to resolve just the manifestations, however the problem is still in existence and crime must be eliminated by destroying the main cause.

The good guards failed to reject orders given by the tough guards as the good guards appreciated the importance of harmony amongst them. By countering the bad guards, the good guards would have caused a loophole that would have affected their own safety as well as that of the prisoners.

At every level, the disenfranchisement and bondage of Black Americans was reified. “Sheriffs….state police, judges, and state governments conspired to keep the convict-lease business…..officers depended on the leasing system for a substantial

Just like slavery and the Jim Crow laws of the south, mass incarceration today is a new way to segregate African Americans it’s a way to create a new caste system in which African Americans are treated “second class citizens”, prevented from equality in racial, social and political rights. Michelle Alexander jumps into the equity framework and clarifies how a ton of practices and convictions from subjection times are quite recently marked diversely now. Alexander argues in her book The New Jim Crow that “A system of racial and social control” still exist against African Americans.