The New Jim Crow
by Michelle Alexander
If you care about Black lives, you must care about the astronomical and disproportionate impact the carceral state has had on Black communities. This book provides a broad yet straightforward introduction to how we arrived at mass incarceration and its devastating impact on those labelled “criminals”.
“As a society, our decision to heap shame and contempt upon those who struggle and fail in a system designed to keep them locked up and locked out says far more about ourselves than it does about them.”
MY TAKEAWAYS
The Reagan-era War on Drugs, coinciding with a large economic downturn, dramatically increased funding for federal law enforcement agencies and the like, while decreasing funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education.
The War on Drugs and “tough on crime” ideals were driven more by political agendas rather than an actual issues or crime rates.
Racialized stereotypes and rhetoric were often used to draw support for the War on Drugs and “tough on crime” motives, later increasing the likelihood that poor people and people of color would fall victim to criminalization and incarceration.
The War on Drugs and “tough on crime” policies led to an explosive increase in the funding and militarization of police and other law enforcement agencies, who were then incentivized to conduct pretext stops, asset seizures (including cash), home raids, and more violent attacks on communities.
In less than 30 years, the US penal population exploded from roughly 300,000 to more than 2 million - drug convictions accounted for the majority of the increase.
While many believe our prisons are filled with “rapists and murderers”, these crimes account for a small percentage of our prison population.
“The notion that a vast gulf exists between ‘criminals’ and those of us who have never served time in prison is a fiction created by the racial ideology that birthed mass incarceration, namely that there is something fundamentally wrong and morally inferior about ‘them’.”
Incarceration and the labeling of “criminal” or “felon” (disproportionately of Black and Brown people) have a lifelong impact that locks individuals out of a variety of necessities including employment, housing, and many other public resources, thus forming what Michelle Alexander posits as the new racial caste system.
Mass incarceration and our current criminal legal system serve as tools of social control with alarming parallels to the nature of the Jim Crow era.