Historical Analysis, Discourse, And Frame Analysis

With criminality already tied closely to race, the War on Drugs legislation expanded the definition of crime to drug usages. As demonstrated in The New Jim Crow, a 1995 survey found that 95% of participants pictured an African American person when asked to picture a drug user, but in reality, only 15% of the drug users were African Americans. This survey showed us the extent to which media’s overrepresentation of black

Glen Loury argues in his essay called “A Nation of Jailer” that the United States is a nation that follows a society that has been affected by racial bias. Loury claims that the people who are targeted by law are racial discriminated. Loury mainly talks about the “poorly educated black and Hispanic men who reside in large numbers in our great urban centers.” (1) Loury has made a clear and strong point. Loury shows his points in three main ways. Loury emphasizes his points by using ethos, logos, and pathos. Loury uses many well-known characters in his writing, and Loury uses strong phrases that impact the reader emotionally and questions to make sure the reader has some sort of connection to Loury’s evidence. Furthermore, Loury gives a lot

In today’s modern world, many people would be surprised to find out that there is still a racial caste system in America. After witnessing the election of a black president, people have started believing that America has entered a post-racial society. This is both a patently false and dangerous mindset. The segregation and stigma of race is still very much alive in our society. Instead of a formalized institution such as slavery or Jim Crow, America has found a new way to continue the marginalization of blacks by using the criminal justice system. In Michelle Alexander’s book “ The New Jim Crow”, she shows how America’s “ War on Drugs “ has become a tool of racial segregation and how the discretionary enforcement of drug laws has

Three models portraying our criminal justice system are the Wedding Cake Model, Criminalization Model, and the President’s Commission Model. The Wedding Cake Model “emphasizes that the system handles different kinds of cases differently; it depicts four layers or tiers of cases”. While the Wedding Model offers an accurate typology of cases processed through the system, its primary focus is on the decisions of prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. There is a glimpse the role of power and status in such decisions, but the factors of race, class, and gender are not explicit. But, this model does not address the lawmaking process and the social inequalities in the economic and political systems in which laws are forged. Now the second model, the Criminalization model explores the role of social class in the criminal justice system. It shows that the system is used to control certain groups of people by criminalizing their behaviors and targeting them for arrest and incarceration. The third model, the President’s Commission Model provides the most famous portrayal of the criminal justice system by summarizing the stages of the system. In comparison, the Wedding Cake Model and the Criminalization Model are similar because they both show the recognition of power and status in the criminal justice system. These two models are the opposite of the President’s Commission Model due to the fact that this model does not show the roles played by race, gender, and social class at the

After rejecting conservatives’ idea that criminal behaviors are caused by black culture, Alexander said that poverty and inequality are the “root causes” of crimes. She then includes a quote from Lyndon Johnson, “there is something mighty wrong when a candidate for the highest office bemoans violence in the streets but votes against the war on poverty, votes against the civil rights act and votes against major educational bills that come before him as a legislator” (45). Alexander uses this quote to criticize politicians who purport that they want to reinstall “law and order” but vote against bills that fight the antecedents of crimes. This may spark a series of questions in the reader, such as “if their motive is really to reinstall “law and order,” why aren’t trying to eliminate the origin of crimes? Why are they ignoring them instead? Alexander is insinuating that these politicians want minorities in prison, where they can control them, supporting her argument that the government always tries to control minorities. This also supports her argument that the “war on drug” and “law and order” movements represent the new form control system in the United States.

Part 1 of the book highlights chapter 1 and 2, which talks about politics and the consequences of incarceration while chapter 2 talks about the politics of being punished within the united states, some sub topics between chapter 1 and 2 include problem ownership, philosophies, historic changes with the corrections policy throughout time and the economic impact of being incarcerated. Chapter 2 talks about the process in which politics can affect the outcome on crime and punishment, throughout the 1960s the criminal justice system has changed a lot especially correctional professionals who have brought issues to crime and its political forefront.

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.

A large reason for the writing of this book is that there is currently not much research concerning or call for a criminal justice reform. According to Alexander, the main goal of the book is to “stimulate a much-needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy in the United States” (2012:16). Another premise for this research is that it is no longer socially correct to use race to discriminate against people, so Alexander argues that society as a whole is now

In his book “Punishment and Inequality in America” Western discusses the underlying racial disparities that have lead to a mass incarceration in the United States. He states that incarceration rates have increased by a substantial amount. The race and class disparities viewed in impromesment are very large and class disparities have grown by a dramatic amount. In his book he argues that an increase in mass incarceration occured due to a significant increase in crime. The increase in mass incarceration can also be correlated with urban street crime that proliferated as joblessness in inner-city communities increased (Western, 2006). He also states that an increase in incarceration rates may be due to the changes in politics and policy which have intensified criminal punishment even though criminal offending did not increase. Although these are substantial reasons as to why incarceration has increased significantly in the US there are many underlying issues. The incarceration rates amongst young black men have increased the most in the United states, black men are more likely to go to prison than white and Hispanic men (Western, 2006). This may be largely due to factors such as unemployment, family instability, and neighborhood disorder which combine to produce especially high rates of violence among young black men in the United States (Western, 2006). A rise in incarceration rates may also be largely due to to increased drug arrests which represent the racial disparity.

Mass incarceration became a public policy issue in the United States in the 2000s. Now in 2016, there are still many questions about America’s incarceration rate, 698 prisoners per 100,000 people, which is only surpassed by Seychelle’s at 868 for every 100,000. They concern the phenomenon’s beginning, purpose, development, and essentially resolution. In her book published this year, assistant professor of history and African and African-American studies at Harvard Elizabeth Hinton challenges popular belief that mass incarceration originated from Reagan’s War on Drugs. Mass incarceration’s function as a modern racial caste system is discussed in a 2010 book by Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, civil

In the book The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander argues that a racial caste system still exists in the United States. Furthermore, this caste system is set up by the social control that is created by the discriminatory practices of the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs and mass incarcerations create a racial “undercaste” of African-Americans, by marginalizing ex-offenders in America. Within her arguments she describes the racist practices of, and policies surrounding, the War on Drugs. These extend from the police force on the ground, who are apprehending the criminals or, in many cases, innocent people, all the way to the practices of prosecuting and sentencing of these people. There are many instances where the injustices extend all the way to the Supreme Court. However, that may not be surprising given the fact that the War on Drugs is a federal government institution. This racism, while inherent, is not always apparent. In this paper I will assess the broken practices that the War on Drugs implements, including mass incarceration, and how racism is the basis for these practices. However, while it does show that racism does exist in these practices, Alexander doesn’t necessarily show that racism is the reason behind the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, but rather a by-product.

The past quarter century has seen an enormous growth in the American incarceration rate. Importantly, some scholars have suggested that the rate of prison growth has little to do with the theme of crime itself, but it is the end result of particular U.S. policy choices. Clear (2007) posits that "these policy choices have had well-defined implications for the way prison populations have come to replicate a concentrated occurrence among specified subgroups in the United States population in particular young black men from deprived communities" (p. 49).

America is experiencing a social phenomenon commonly referred to as mass incarceration, in which the rate of incarceration has increased by, “...has grown by 700 percent.(Goffman)” in the last 40 years. Mass incarceration is difficult to digest in totality due to its immense nature, nuance and variety of answers with the essence of ‘could be right’. In order to decipher the complex puzzle of mass incarceration, we must establish borders to manifest clarifying order in the overwhelming clutter of data. Theory will assist in demonstrating how the general and specific facts of issues, in this case mass incarceration, relate by essentially declaring the philosophical frame of the interpretation. In order to gain a nuanced understanding of America’s mass incarceration, three relatively distinct theories will be applied: conflict theory, structural functionalism and symbolic interactionism. These theories are categorized by two approaches of sociological investigation- macrosociological, which emphasizes the analysis of social systems and populations on a large scale, and micro sociological, which emphasizes the impact individuals have on social structure.

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Modern Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, the author argues the legal system doing its job “perfectly” well—the United States has simply replaced one caste system, the Jim Crow laws instituted in the 1880s and designed to oppress recently freed black slaves, for another—a system which uses the War on Drugs, which was instituted in the 1970s, to imprison, parole, and detain people of color, keeping the majority of minorities in the United States in a permanent state of incarceration. This an important issue because it affects the everyday lives of people around the nation. Alexander looks in detail at what economists normally miss—the entire legal structure of the courts, parole, probation and laws that effectively turn a person who may have done the crime into a person who is unworthy or “incapable” of rehabilitation. Alexander does a wonderful job of telling the truth, and blaming the right people, who can be liberal or conservative, white or black, who inflict this injustice on others. Alexander’s writing, however, does lack a structure that the reader can follow, which ultimately weakens her overall case.

Different forms of media, such as television, films, books, and newspapers, have similar ways of portraying the criminal justice system. The media constructs representations of crime and justice and in doing this, it presents an often dramatized representation of the criminal justice system; and this does not just influence on the public’s lay view of crime but also for criminal justice experts (Marsh, 2014). In the media it is commonly known that they are a business, and businesses need to make a profit. Because of this, the media’s portrayal of the criminal justice system has been very negative. With the news, their main purpose is to produce what sells. So many of them would edit the information they have gathered and make a story that will sell. Also the media does not show the full process of the criminal justice as a quick process, while in fact it is not. For example, last year, Netflix released a short series called “Making A Murderer”. Most people claimed that they feel like they can solve a crime when they finished watching a series. While that series is very factual, it does not hit every single step of the criminal justice process.