The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

by Michelle Alexander

Every system of injustice depends on the silence, paralysis, confusion, and cooperation of those it seeks to eliminate or control.

There are many things that are difficult to manage during this period of our nation’s history; avoiding terms that reduce people to prison labels is not one of them.

The truth is that the overwhelming majority of people sentenced to prisons and jails, as well as those placed on probation or parole, have been convicted of nonviolent crimes, especially drug offenses.

the fact that half of a state’s prison population is comprised of people labeled violent offenders does not mean that half of the people sentenced to prison in that state have been convicted of violent crimes.

As many advocates have pointed out, the distinction between survivors and perpetrators of violence is largely illusory, as virtually no one commits violence without first surviving it.

Once human beings are defined as the problem in the public consciousness, their elimination through deportation, incarceration, or even genocide becomes nearly inevitable.

“slavery didn’t end; it evolved.”

Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns.

The system of mass incarceration is based on the prison label, not prison time.

A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch.