ipl-logo

The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration

983 Words4 Pages

In her book, The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander who was a civil rights lawyer and legal scholar, reveals many of America’s harsh truths regarding race within the criminal justice system. Though the Jim Crow laws have long been abolished, a new form has surfaced, a contemporary system of racial control through mass incarceration. In this book, mass incarceration not only refers to the criminal justice system, but also a bigger picture, which controls criminals both in and out of prison through laws, rules, policies and customs. The New Jim Crow that Alexander speaks of has redesigned the racial caste system, by putting millions of mainly blacks, as well as Hispanics and some whites, behind bars …show more content…

Alexander explains how discretion is granted at almost every stage of the legal system, especially regarding the discretion that prosecutors have, jury selection and policing. Also, many of those arrested either get no legal representation or are given public defenders who are too overworked to truly dedicate their time, and rarely go to trial due to the pressures of guilty plea bargains. To add to the misfortune, arrestees are not told how a guilty plea will negatively damage the rest of their life, due to debt, denial of public assistance, loss of voting rights, and the social label of being a felon. Innocent family members are punished sometimes too, for if they are caught housing a criminal they can face losing their home, food stamps, and welfare. Alexander makes it clear that convicted criminals aren’t the only ones being affected by the vicious consequences of the legal system, but that their families are …show more content…

Alexander notes that justice system has respect for the wisdom of police judgment, which often results in their arrests not being questioned. Through the tactic of consent searches, police officers are given the ammunition to make their arrests. They use traffic violations and drug sniffing dogs in order to search people and their property for drugs. The tactic of stop and frisk is also often employed, and is deemed acceptable if the officer has “probable cause” to stop the individual in the first place. Alexander points out that these tactics are mostly employed in poor, urban areas, because making an arrest is much easier since blacks tend to sell drugs more out in the

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

    1127 Words  | 5 Pages

    The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is a book outlining and analysing the social constructs of the United States of America through the context of mechanics of the judicial system. It compares and contrasts the slavery, old Jim Crow law and post Jim Crow law eras in the means to highlight the racial discrimination against the Black and Brown community by the White elite. The author explores the court cases and legislation passed by the government to implement a national system geared to favor the White community and its effects on the imagery that has developed in the American mind set. Michelle Alexander is among many things an African-American woman. She is lawyer who represented in the Civil Rights era.

    Read More

  • Review Of Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander

    990 Words  | 4 Pages

    The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a non fiction book written by Michelle Alexander, a well known civil rights lawyer, is a book that every American citizen should read. Alexander’s book cover is of three metal bars and two strong black hands holding them tightly. The book spent multiple weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list and has a foreword written by Cornel West, he is a well known and respected social activist. The book discuss how the new system of oppression for people of color in the United States is mass incarceration. Jim Crow laws were a systematic way to segregate and discriminate against black people.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

    174 Words  | 1 Pages

    According to Alexander, “Today, most American know and don’t know the truth about mass incarceration” (p. 182). Before reading this book I did know of the inequality towards people of color in the criminal justice. book has made me realized how easily we as humans, jump into conclusion without thinking twice and judging a person by their look or race without trying to get who they are. Although most people know better and know how wrong it is to judge a book or person on their cover we often find ourselves doing just that when we first come into contact with a different culture. This book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander has made me realized how the United State has one of the largest population in prison.

    Read More

  • Comparison Of Ta-Nehisi Coates The Joy Of Motherhood

    1160 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, she depicts the mass incarceration rate in American and recalls cases of people going to prison that personally affected here. The majority of the African-American men are either in prison or have some type of criminal record making it unable for them to vote and get jobs. Alexander describes the criminal justice systems as the “New Jim Crow,” a modern type of oppression for African Americans. Not only does FreeQuency talk about mass incarceration rate she also touches on police brutality in her poem. FreeQuency says, “criminal before child,” (FreeQuency, 59) and “I will not take it for Oscar Granted/that they will not come/and kill my son” (FreeQuency, 67-69).

    Read More

  • New Jim Crow Introduction

    239 Words  | 1 Pages

    Alexander’s book introduction addresses some of the injustices that minorities especially African Americans have to endure under the war on drugs. However, Alexander also points out that drug crimes are relatively low compared to other countries meaning that there is no correlation at all between rising efforts on law enforcement funding and declining crime rates. Alexander comes to the conclusion that the current criminal justice system is set up to keep social control over minorities. The New Jim Crow assignment has a total of twenty six questions.

    Read More

  • Racial Caste System In The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

    748 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow she states that there is a new racial caste system—mass incarceration—in America. Alexander argues that the prior racial caste system, Jim Crow, has not ended—it’s merely been redesigned. Alexander’s main argument is that in this current era of colorblindness, it is not permissible to discriminate on the basis of race hence mass incarceration labels people of color as criminals and then uses all the practices that were “supposedly left behind”. Alexander uses the term racial caste because mass incarceration, like Jim Crow and slavery, were systems that denoted a stigmatized racial group and forced them into a permanent inferior position by law.

    Read More

  • The Prison Industrial Complex By Angela Davis

    467 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues written by Angela Davis explains her personal experiences growing up in Birmingham, Alabama during a time of racial segregation, capitalism and an unjust prison system. With the use of her personal experience and scholarly research, activist Davis investigates the institutionalized biases that support the criminal justice system in order to identify potential reforms that could result in a more just and equal society. In the chapter “The Prison Industrial Complex”, Davis highlights the relationship between the criminal justice system and people of color/immigrants. Several issues are addressed such as fear of crime and the reality of prisons, creation of public enemies, conditions which produce the prison industrial complex, structural connections and

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander

    1006 Words  | 5 Pages

    For this semester, we read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. The book talks about how minorities face, especially black men, being treated like second-class citizens by the criminal justice system and this leading to our modern mass incarceration problem. Alexander goes as far as to say “We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” (2). This is shown by the War on Drugs.

    Read More

  • Review Of Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander

    983 Words  | 4 Pages

    ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.

    Read More

  • Michelle Alexander The Lockdown Analysis

    718 Words  | 3 Pages

    We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way

    Read More

  • Collateral Consequences Of Mass Incarceration

    1203 Words  | 5 Pages

    To ignore mass incarceration as a form of racism because of the strives made in civil rights of American History over the last 60 years, is to assume ignorance that will eventually topple America. This caste system opens the door and justifies other forms of civil abuses. One cannot help the color of skin that they are born with, either should his or her life trajectory be set or punished for it. Bibliography Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

    Read More

  • The New Jim Crow Analysis

    1721 Words  | 7 Pages

    Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.

    Read More

  • Race In The Prison System Essay

    965 Words  | 4 Pages

    People of all different races and ethnicities are locked behind bars because they have been convicted of committing a crime and they are paying for the consequences. When looking at the racial composition of a prison in the United States, it does not mimic the population. This is because some races and ethnicities are over represented in the correctional system in the U.S. (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018). According Walker et al. (2018), African-Americans/Blacks make up less than fifteen percent of the U.S. population, while this race has around thirty-seven percent of the population in the correctional system today.

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography: The New Jim Crow

    1343 Words  | 6 Pages

    Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration Literature Review

    1728 Words  | 7 Pages

    The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.

    Read More

More about The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration

Open Document