The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration Essay

Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, examines mass incarceration in the United States, why the criminal justice system works the way it does towards minorities, the detriments associated with mass incarceration as it relates to offenders, and much more. In the introduction of her book, Alexander immediately paints the harsh reality of mass incarceration with the story of Jarvious Cotton who is denied the right to vote among other rights because he, “has been labeled as a felon and is currently on parole” (1). Other information Alexander presents in her introduction are her qualifications as an author of the book, and gives a brief summary of each chapter and how each one is laid out. Her qualifications are she is African-American civil rights attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and is also an Associate Professor at the University of Stanford Law School. From a critical standpoint, Alexander seems very qualified to write on the topic, being part of the marginalized group and also being an expert in the legal field of which the topic covers, enhances her ethos to where one could consider her an expert in mass incarceration topics, as they relate to African-Americans. Overall, the introduction of her book does a great job starting out giving a stark reality of topic at hand, giving brief statistical references about mass incarceration in the United States, and giving an outline for her book.

Racism in the United States has not remained the same over time since its creation. Racism has shifted, changed, and shaped into unrecognizable ways that fit into the fabric of the American society to render it nearly invisible to the majority of Americans. Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness shatters this dominantly held belief. The New Jim Crow makes a reader profoundly question whether the high rates of incarceration in the United States is an attempt to maintain blacks as an underclass. Michelle Alexander makes the assertion that “[w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” using the criminal justice system and colorblind rhetoric. (Alexander 2). The result is a population of Black and Latino men who face barriers and deprivation of rights as did Blacks during the Jim Crow era. Therefore, mass incarceration has become the new Jim Crow.

In the book The New Jim Crow: “Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” is written by Michelle Alexander talks about issues the racial caste and mass incarceration in the United States. Michelle Alexander argues that even Jim crow is over, but there’s still injustices in people of color communities. In her book “The New Jim Crow”, Alexander describes many social problems make African American people controlled by institutions. The author compares Jim Crow with mass incarceration is a form of controlling black Americans as Jim Crow law. Through Michelle Alexander's book, we can understand her argument that mass incarceration is a new form of legal discrimination just like Jim Crow law. The criminal justice system is biased toward the powers of privileges. Mass incarceration in America is “the new Jim Crow”, a new form of social control because the racial caste system segregates people away from mainstream society.

In 1982 the crack epidemic started, which shortly after Ronald Reagan expanded the war on drugs that Nixon started, one of his top aides admitted that the war on drugs was used to “target African Americans and hippies”. The number of incarcerations before the war on drugs was expanded in 1980 was four thousand seven hundred forty-nine for drug related crimes, in 1990 that number increased to twenty-four thousand two hundred ninety-seven, sixty percent of those incarcerations were African Americans (sentencingproject.org). If you were caught with one gram of crack you got the same sentencing as someone found with eighteen grams of cocaine, it was policies like these that targeted lower income black communities because crack was much cheaper than cocaine and was more likely for a white person to have cocaine.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States. Michelle Alexander (2010) argues that despite the old Jim Crow is death, does not necessarily means the end of racial caste (p.21). In her book “The New Jim Crow”, Alexander describes a set of practices and social discourses that serve to maintain African American people controlled by institutions. In this book her analyses is centered in examining the mass incarceration phenomenon in recent years. Comparing Jim Crow with mass incarceration she points out that mass incarceration is

She argues that when President Reagan officially announced the War on Drugs, less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue of the nation. Crack began to spread within the black community two years after

After reading both The New Jim Crow and the article on the myth os mass incarceration,

The War on Drugs began in increments, first with President Nixon and secondly with President Reagan (Hill, Oliver, Marion, 2012). While under the Nixon administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration was developed due to the thought of how drugs can affect an individual as well as a community. Drugs did not only affect the user and the community, but also the families as well as children. Out of all the presidents, it is documented that President Nixon was one who had discussions about drugs more than any other president (Hill, et al., 2012).

In the late 1960's and early 1970's, the federal government began to increasingly tighten drug laws. In 1972, President Richard Nixon formally declared a "War on Drugs", which continues

Racial discrimination in the United States has been a radical issue plaguing African Americans from as early as slavery to the more liberal society we see today. Slavery is one of the oldest forms of oppression against African Americans. Slaves were brought in from Africa at increasingly high numbers to do the so-called dirty work or manual labor of their white owners. Many years later, after the abolishment of slavery came the Jim Crow era. In the 1880s, acts known as the Jim Crow laws were enacted by Southern states to keep oppression of African Americans alive. These laws helped to legalize segregation between blacks and whites. Slavery and Jim Crow were created to regulate how African Americans functioned in society. Slaves were refused the right to vote, refused citizenship, refused education, and labeled as incompetent as a way for whites to keep what Author Michelle Alexander of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness calls “social control”. Alexander argues that mass incarceration is the new modern “racial caste system” of social control. She further goes on to claim that this new system of mass incarceration has replaced the old social systems that were used to oppress African Americans such as slavery and Jim Crow. The system of mass incarceration fueled by the War on Drugs was established as a form of racial control. This new system puts people of color into an endless cycle of

The War on Drugs is a term that is commonly applied to the campaign of prohibition of drugs. The goal of this campaign is to reduce the illegal drug trade across America. This term “ War on Drugs” was used during Nixon’s campaign in which he declared War on Drugs during a press conference in 1971. Following this declaration many organizations were created to stop the spread of drugs, like the DEA and Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement. Note that Nixon’s approach to this problem was to fund treatment rather than law enforcement. After Nixon’s retirement from office, most of the funding went from going into treatment to the law enforcement. Which militarized the police force giving the officer’s military weapons and gear. With this, the sentencing for possessing drugs was changed as well, resulting incarcerations rates to increase overtime. The increase of incarceration rates started to create many patterns that were soon noticeable. The funding’s that go into the law enforcement has shown to greatly have an affect on the incarceration rates.

In 1968, President Richard Nixon initiated the War on Drugs when American soldiers were coming home from the Vietnam War addicted to heroin. More than a decade later, President Ronald Reagan launches the South Florida Drug Task force, headed by then Vice-President George Bush, in response to the city of Miami’s demand for help. In 1981, Miami was the financial and import central for cocaine and marijuana, and the residents were fed up.

Imagine a world where drug use and drug related issues are no longer a problem in our current society. You could walk in your own city without having to see anyone use illegal drugs. The streets would be safer and the levels of drug use in the United Sates would almost be nonexistent. This is what the American government had in mind when the thought of war on drugs was first conceived. In 1986 President Reagan made it his number one priority to ensure that drugs were no longer going to be an existing problem in America. The War on Drugs was going to stop the production of drugs, disrupt the flow of drugs and even destroy the open-air market in inner cities (Cooper 1). Just the very idea of ending drug problems in America seemed palpable

Crime control has always been a topic of major discussion in the field of social sciences. Imprisonment is a well-known tool for controlling crime; it process involves deviant members of society being isolated in restricted areas and punished in accordance to the criminal justice system which is arguably one of the oldest institutions in western countries and has the basic but often complex function of serving and protecting the justice of each civilian and catching and punishing those who represent a threat to the society. In fact as evidence suggests the human race instincts do react and punish the ones who commit offences. When it comes to punishment there are three main reasons to punish which are retribution, incapacitation and deterrence (McGuire, 2004) however these reasons have different approaches and criticisms. Many argue that prison should ideally help to discourage members of society from committing crimes and also deter prison inmates from re-offending. This means using prison as a general deterrence, by using an individual criminal as an example to the rest of society. However, one could arise questions regarding this matter, questions such as; does the present prison system works to rehabilitate offenders or does it work to punish them? In fact it has been predominantly argued that the system actually fails to achieve either of these tasks. Is this due to the fact that the prison system is not being harsh enough and not giving the right support to

Mass incarceration is one of very many huge problems in the United States. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in many countries around the world. The drug war and racial profiling is a huge cause to mass incarceration. Some individuals believe that mass incarceration is not the blame for the war on drugs. The Jim Crow law was more than just a series of severe anti-black laws, it became a way of life. Michelle Alexander is an author who wrote The New Jim Crow, states that, "The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery” (740). Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow covers many issues with the U.S criminal justice system. This period called Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system up in till mid-1960s. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were positioned to the status of second class citizens. The name Jim Crow is a fictional name that was term used for blacks. There is an enormous prison problem in the United States. More than 1 out of 100 Americans are behind bars and the U.S is the largest prison population in the world. An author name Michael Vitiello wrote an article about Mass Incarceration and says, “Its reduction in its prison population...the state's prison health care and mental health systems were so inadequate that the state was violating the prisoners' Eighth Amendment rights to be free from cruel and