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

by Michelle Alexander

As of 2008, there were approximately 2.3 million people in prisons and jails and a staggering 5.1 million people under “community correctional supervision”—i.e., on probation or parole.89 Merely reducing prison terms does not have a major impact on the majority of people in the system. It is the badge of inferiority—the felony record—that relegates people for their entire lives to second-class status. As described in chapter 4, for people convicted of drug crimes, there is little hope of escape. Barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to “check the box” indicating a felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and denied licenses for a wide range of professions, people whose only crime is drug addiction or possession of a small amount of drugs for recreational use find themselves locked out of the mainstream society and economy—permanently.