The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration and Racial Justice

Introduction: A Modern Form of Racial Control

Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness offers a scathing and disturbing portrait of institutionalized racism in the United States. In an article written for the Huffington Post that supplements her book, Alexander states plainly: "There are more African-Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began." Beginning with this central fact, Alexander discusses the use of incarceration as a new form of slavery and segregation. African-Americans have been systematically excluded from access to social and cultural capital, and denied access to economic and political empowerment.

The election of Barack Obama did not change much for the majority of African-Americans who contend with institutionalized racism, systematic poverty, and disenfranchisement. "As of 2004, more African-American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified," writes Alexander. Alexander's book places the incarceration problem within a framework of racism, showing that the oppression of Black Americans is endemic and systematic.

Systemic Racism and the Criminal Justice System

Reducing the problem to the belief that Black Americans commit more crimes — and that a disproportionate number of them are therefore in prison — reflects ignorance of the systematic problems plaguing the American criminal justice system. In fact, these problems are sociological in nature and stem from the depths of the nation's history. Slavery led to Jim Crow, which led to the outright disenfranchisement of communities and the dismantling of families through impoverishment. White supremacy flourished throughout much of the twentieth century and continues to do so today, particularly in states such as Texas. Alexander shows that incarceration rates and demographics in the United States are a symptom of a wider problem. Coming from a legal background, Alexander's perspective lacks a complete sociological analysis, but the author compensates by framing the issue as a matter of law.

Her facts are well-supported. According to a Justice Policy Institute report, "the fact that the expanding use of incarceration in Texas disproportionately affects the state's non-White citizens remains undeniable." Alexander's The New Jim Crow is divided into six chapters, each of which shows how the criminal justice system is failing millions of Americans. As Alexander states, "the way the system actually works bears little resemblance to what happens on television or in movies" (58). At every level of its operation, the criminal justice system is skewed against those who have no social, economic, or political power — from the definition of what constitutes a crime, to the methods by which police apprehend suspects, to the process of arrest, trial, and conviction. Each of these stages is weighted in favor of whites against non-whites.

The War on Drugs as an Engine of Mass Incarceration

Alexander focuses firmly on the War on Drugs as the prime example of where the United States has gone wrong. "With only a few exceptions," states the author, "the Supreme Court has seized every opportunity to facilitate the drug war, primarily by eviscerating Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by the police" (Alexander 60). The police use spurious tactics, including racial profiling, to apprehend suspects. The War on Drugs is itself a moral and ethical failure that destroys communities by manufacturing a criminal culture where there was none. It is an "engine of mass incarceration" of Black Americans — whites are far less likely to be arrested or convicted of the same drug offenses (Alexander 184).

Without the War on Drugs, there would be no proliferation of gang and gun culture created to protect black markets. A manufactured drug problem allows law enforcement to segregate communities and stigmatize non-whites. The criminalization of drug use has thus served as a vehicle for racial control rather than genuine public safety.