Another component of the prison-industrial complex are courts. Our court system is overburdened with cases of poor people who cannot pay bail, as well as public defenders whose caseload are so large that it does not allow them to dedicate the proper amount of time to each case. Many times this results in a large number of public defenders pushing for defendants to take plea deals. This infringes on a defendant 's fifth amendment right to trial by jury (see appendix 1). Many of the people targeted by police for surveillance are those who later face time in court fighting for their freedom. Statistics show that Blacks are convicted and sent to prison at a much higher rate than whites although they commit crimes at virtually the same rate. Prisons tdehumanize inmates, disconnecting and isolating them from society (Herzing). …show more content…
Her thesis coins the term the “New Jim Crow” as a way to refer to the discrimination and inequity of the prison-industrial complex as a new form of bondage against poor people, and people of color. The New Jim Crow is a caste system which puts poor people and people of color into second class citizenship by incarcerating them and stripping them of their rights
The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness written by Michelle Alexander discusses the old racial caste systems and the system of mass incarceration, and she uses analogies to show different parallels and similarities between them. Alexander states it is creating a modern racial caste system. She asks where have all the good black men gone, and uses examples like Obama's speech on the black stereotype of fathers who are nowhere to be found. She's explaining how many look into this idea but don't reasonably solve the question. Alexander answers the question by saying they are warehoused in prison; locked in cages.
Immediately Alexander comes in with a real life case to show how “The more things change, the more they remain the same” (Alexander). She mentions how at one point she would have been skeptical to believing that there was such a thing that could compare to Jim Crow. I believe she made an effort to include this because often people are afraid to admit that they are, or once were, ignorant. By admitting this she was able to see the bigger picture that she now can not “unsee” (Alexander). Another thing that I found interesting was how the “victim” whose story she shared had the last name Cotton.
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.
Michelle Alexander - The New Jim Crow In “The New Jim Crow”, author Michelle Alexander argues that the war on drugs is just an excuse to target African Americans and keep millions of black people in poverty or in jail. Alexander thinks that racism is still very prevalent in today’s world. She believes that the criminal justice system uses the system of mass incarceration to control black people and exclude them from the political process. Many African American people are not allowed to vote because they have gone to jail and they are labeled felons for life.
Moreover, the aftermath of incarceration for convicted African-American felons entails that they are unable to vote. The constitution implements this idea that anybody can vote regardless of race or gender, but criminals are unable to vote. Criminals occupy the lower caste in society meaning that nobody wants to be like them ,stereotypes are associated with them, and nobody wants to advocate for them or their rights. Michelle Alexander explicitly describes the ongoing oppression by stating that “ Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy” ( Alexander). Alexander is talking about the black man when she says “he” because majority of the
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.
Eduardo Mendieta constructs an adequate response to Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete? in his article, The Prison Contract and Surplus Punishment: On Angela Y. Davis’ Abolitionism. While Mendieta discusses the pioneering abolitionist efforts of Angela Davis, the author begins to analyze Davis’ anti-prison narrative, ultimately agreeing with Davis’ polarizing stance. Due to the fact Mendieta is so quick to begin analyzing Davis’ work, the article’s author inadvertently makes several assumptions about readers of his piece. For instance, Mendieta assumes that readers will automatically be familiar with Angela Davis.
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
Race is one the most sensitive and controversial topics of our time. As kids, we were taught that racism has gotten better as times has passed. However, the author, Michelle Alexander, of The New Jim Crow proposes the argument that racism has not gotten better, but the form of racism that we known in textbooks is not the racism we experience today. Michelle Alexander has countless amounts of plausible arguments, but she has failed to be a credible author, since she doesn’t give enough citations or evidence for her argument to convince people who may not have prior agreement with her agreement.. Alexander’s biggest mistake when it came to being a credible author was starting off the book with a countless number of claims without any evidence in her Introduction.
To explain, 41 percent of black female felony drug offenders on average are sentenced to prison, as compared to 24 percent of white females. Similar to drug offenses, violent crimes typically boast a 74 percentile of black male convicted felons serve prison time, whereas approximately 60 percent of white male convicted felons do time. And finally, with respect to all
A book on this topic, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, explains how the criminal justice system “Intentionally targets poor uneducated black men.” Michelle Alexander , author of The New Jim Crow, claims that the prison system is a racial hierarchy and reform is ineffective, the only true solution is to dismantle the prison system altogether. This claim seems drastic but
The racial disparity can be accounted for through the mass incarceration of black offenders in terms of sentencing with mention of a racial caste in place, not allowing those of color to move from their position. As such, mass incarceration has led to prisons being filled with an overpopulation of those who are black than any other race. Interesting enough, it has been proven through surveys that those who are white are more likely to engage in drug crime rather than those who are black. I found this to be an interesting point to discuss as it raises the question as to just why are more people of color incarcerated at a growing rate than
While this may not be entirely true i believe he means that blacks are getting sent to prison more than any other
The Huffington Post says, “The U.S. incarcerates nearly seven times as many people, measured as a share of population, as Canada does. People of color are disproportionately represented in the American prison population and are typically punished more severely than white peers for the same crimes” (Daniel Marans). Racism against people of color has caused them to be represented poorly in society as potential criminals, especially black. MIT informs its viewers that “according to the United States census Bureau, blacks are twice as likely to be poor compared to other races, and eight times as likely to be imprisoned. Blacks are also three times more likely to be convicted of drug violations than whites.
There are self-report studies as well, that suggest lower levels of black overrepresentation in criminal offense appear to be too involved in serious crimes. Most data comes from a wide variety of the general population. According to NACCP, 5 percent of the world’s population are in the Unites States and has 25 percent of world prisoners. That is, 1 in every 31 adults are in prison, jail, or on probation. The NACCP shares statistical data on race and incarceration.