13th: Documentary Summary

In her other book chapter 5 “Are Prisons Obsolete?” Angela Davis conveys the ideology of imposers using racism’s and prison labor for profit in advantage to the elites. She expresses her claim by including the data of black males

Her central thesis is that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow,” or the new system of control used by the government to uphold racial class in the U.S. This book will be helpful to my research because it directly discusses the topic of race and the criminal justice system. Amnesty International. (2003). United States of America: Death by discrimination

Also, African Americans served longer sentences and were shipped to custodial institutions whereas, Caucasians were sent to nicer establishments. To conclude, Gross explained that there was a clear relationship between women’s historical experiences and mass incarceration today. This journal used a heavy amount of historical texts such as books written by bell hooks, Deborah

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.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world with about 2.3 million people in prison. According to Vitanna.org’s statistics, an estimated one million of these prisoners are African American. 12.3 percent of the population is black, yet over 43 percent of America’s prisoners are black. This disparity is certainly unnatural, seeing as how African Americans are no more likely to be criminals than whites. Black men are overrepresented in prisons because of the unfortunately common stereotype that they are all remorseless criminals.

The author found that more people of color, especially black males are under the control our criminal justice system than were enslaved in 1850. The author supports the pervious idea by using specific examples such as the “War on Drugs” to show people of color are targeted more by law enforcement officers and scrutinize harsher by our courts for drug laws but the drug usage is used at the same rate by blacks and whites. With the help of mass-media, the “crack” epidemic in inner cities, the War on Drugs policies, the “Get tough on crime” policies, and the propaganda about people of color all have influenced the way mainstream society thinks about blacks. The author found that mainstream society believes that black people commits more crime and uses more drugs than white people, so therefore blacks deserved to incarcerated. However, Michelle Alexander disproves in “The New Jim Crow” that blacks commit more crimes than whites, the drug usage rates are the same between both races, propaganda has influenced the way mainstream society views blacks and that the “War on Drugs” and the “Get Tough on Crime” was policies targeted towards inner cities and people of color with the intent to enslave them in the criminal justice system by giving them felonies in which people of color are disenfranchise by society.

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.

“African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population.” The majority group of this statistic are people who come from african american backgrounds. The fact that black people are to make up nearly half of the prison population alone, really conveys the rate at which they are being arrested. Black men are often victims of racial profiling by police. They are targeted by police officers, and security guards, and are accused of crimes unrelated to them, simply on the basis of their skin color.

The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Alexander (2012) examines the Jim Crow practices post slavery and the correlation to the mass incarceration of African-American. The creation of Jim Crows laws were used as a tool to promote segregation among the minorities and white Americans. Alexander (2012) takes a look at Jim Crow laws and policies that were put into place to block the social progression of African-Americans from post-slavery to the civil rights movement.

Prison reform has been an ongoing topic in the history of America, and has gone through many changes in America's past. Mixed feelings have been persevered on the status of implementing these prison reform programs, with little getting done, and whether it is the right thing to do to help those who have committed a crime. Many criminal justice experts have viewed imprisonment as a way to improve oneself and maintain that people in prison come out changed for the better (encyclopedia.com, 2007). In the colonial days, American prisons were utilized to brutally punish individuals, creating a gruesome experience for the prisoners in an attempt to make them rectify their behavior and fear a return to prison (encyclopedia.com, 2007). This practice may have worked 200 years ago, but as the world has grown more complex, time has proven that fear alone does not prevent recidivism.

There is disagreement in society about how the purpose of the prison system should be considered. On one hand, the regulations of the prison system may seek deterrence, incapacitation, or retribution to avoid appearing too soft on inmates. On the other hand, the regulations of the prison system may seek to opportunities to re-socialize prisoners or to effect changes in the character, attitudes,

Over the decades, mass incarceration has become an important topic that people want to discuss due to the increasing number of mass incarceration. However, most of the people who are incarceration are people of color. This eventually leads to scholars concluding that there is a relationship between mass incarceration and the legacy of slavery. The reason is that people of color are the individuals who are overrepresented in prison compared to whites. If you think about it, slavery is over and African Americans are no longer mistreated; however, that is not the case as African Americans continue to face oppression from the government and police force.

Many of the incarceration rates for African Americans are about six and a half times greater than that of Caucasians. African Americans make up close to thirteen percent of the U.S. population, yet they happen to represent thirty-eight percent of violent crime arrests. The prison population accounts for forty percent of the African Americans incarcerated. Racial disparity exists mainly due to the mass media and the emergence of crack cocaine. Poverty also goes hand and hand with racial disparity in the United States.

After working with these men for months, you begin to look past the societal mask they are forced to wear due to their past mistakes, and begin to see them as real genuine people. [Thesis and Preview] Life after prison affects all realms of a community. Through the process of leaving prison, to jobs, and to living conditions, I hope we have a better understanding on life after incarceration from this speech.

In America, “there’s a whole culture that promotes this idea of aggressive young black men” (Kristof, 2). The budding generation of African Americans is led to believe what social media, television, and literature portrays them to be murderers, drug dealers, and gangsters, are what their inheritance in society is. To rid of this stereotype that black men are dangerous, social media, video games, and literature should stop illustrating Blacks as the antagonists. Seeing that the media has a strong influence as what Blacks are depicted as, they can change the whole country’s opinion about Blacks, and shift the population’s views of Blacks to a more positive perspective. By exposing in media that other races can be criminals, Blacks would not be in the limelight for being criminals.