Segregation Laws of Jim Crow

Jim Crow Laws

Social pathology has been described in many aspects according to the discipline that defines it and one of the definitions that fit a wide range application of this term is definition of social pathology as a social aspect like old age, poverty, crime that tends to heighten the social disorganization and prevents an individual from making personal adjustments to life or actions that they take (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2014). This further makes the next definition that the study of such social behaviors or social problems that views the individual as a diseased condition to be referred to as social pathology. This paper will hence concentrate on the look at Jim Crow and the laws that this system introduced to the prison system after the Civil War and how these laws portrayed social pathology in their implementation, the conditions that were enforced and the consequences of these prison laws.

The segregation that came with the Jim Crow system was so intense after the Civil war and the emancipation of the slaves. This was during the reconstruction era and what perpetuated the Jim Crow system was the urge to maintain the supremacy that the whites had over the slaved prior to the 1860s. The whites, particularly from the South saw the blacks and coloreds as inferior in all aspects and that even God supported segregation. The blacks and whites in prison were not supposed to be housed together but a clear separation was to be between the two races, let alone that they might have committed the same offence or on the same sentence. The inmates were also not to eat together within the prison and if they were to eat together, then the white prisoners were to be served first and some sort of partition was to be put to separate these two races (Ferris State University, 2012).

The segregation was implemented from the juvenile delinquents facilities as well with the buildings that housed the Negro boys and that housing white boys being not less than one fourth mile to each other, and the boys from these two races were not to be worked together or be associated in any way while behind bars. These rules applied to the reform schools as well.

These above laws were specifically targeted at the prison system in general and all manners of correction facilities. They were implemented from the 1880s to the 1960s where segregation was in a de jure manner mandated through these laws in al sectors of life and not just the prison system alone. This de jure system was mainly predominant and explicit in the Southern United States but the Northern United States the segregation was more de facto with agreements, bank loaning systems, job discrimination were used to perpetuate the segregation. The Jim Crow laws were mainly scripted from the Black Codes that existed from the early 1800s. The implications were dire to the wider society with hatred and race crimes being the order of the day. Property was also destroyed on racial lines and as a means of ensuring supremacy for the whites and as a means of rebellion for the blacks. Within the prison systems, there were several riots that were directed at expressing anger and dissatisfaction by the blacks from the inferior treatment as compared to their white counterparts. For a long time the various states and even the courts upheld and erroneous approach of "separate but equal" policy until the 1960s when the pressure from the civil society outweighed the resistance and the Jim Crow laws were reversed in all states. Though there is still the struggle to ensure equality at all levels, there are laws that protect all people against segregation and discrimination based on the race or origin.