The Criminal Injustice System
Mass Incarceration is Designed to Profit from Inequity
2.3 Million People are Behind Bars in the USA
(Click above or here to see the Prison Policy Initiative’s comprehensive report “The Whole Pie 2020”).
That is a rate of 698 people per 100,000, which is more than 5x as much as the rest of the founding NATO countries.
The Sentencing Project’s 2018 Report to the United Nations states:
“It is the human face — a face of color — of the racial injustice of the United States criminal justice system that is the most compelling reason for reform. It is time for the United States to take affirmative steps to eliminate the racial disparities in its criminal justice system.”
How Did We Get Here?
Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow centers on the foundational argument that mass incarceration is the latest version of the racial caste system in the US. It is the perverse third iteration of systemic subjugation vast numbers of human being based on racism.
“Abolition” of Slavery
As Ava DuVernay’s 13th documentary shows, the amendment that ended slavery in the USA left a tremendous loophole, essentially allowing for the enslavement of convicted criminals. This immediately fed into the regimes of racial terror perpetuated in the Jim Crow era and now in the mass incarceration system.
Exploiting Racism for Political Gain
As the below screenshot from 13th shows, the Nixon campaign consciously chose to exploit racism in order to criminalize, and thereby disenfranchise, communities whose views were inconvenient. It was neither the first nor the last to do so.
Reagan’s War on Drugs
This was part of a larger Republican strategy of (racist) “Law & Order” in which the Reagan War on Drugs played a huge role. Michelle Alexander describes the real budgetary implications of Reagan’s War on Drugs :
“Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. … By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced.” (pp. 49–50 in the 2012 The New Jim Crow)
School to Prison Pipeline
These budgets have direct implications for students stuck in the racist school-to-prison pipeline, according to the ACLU.
Black People are Disproportionately Charged with Drug Crimes
“Black and White Americans sell and use drugs at similar rates, but Black Americans are 2.7 times as likely to be arrested for drug-related offenses. “ (Brookings Institution)
Disenfranchisement
According to The Sentencing Project, over 6 million US Americans cannot vote because of felony convictions, and a disproportionate number of these people are Black.
“Public opinion research shows that a significant majority of Americans favor voting rights for people on probation or parole who are currently supervised in their communities, as well as for individuals who have completed their sentences (Manza, Brooks, and Uggen 2004).
How much difference would it make if state laws were changed to reflect the principles most Americans endorse? The answer is straightforward: Voting rights would be restored to 77 percent of the 6.1 million people currently disenfranchised.” (Summary of The Sentencing Project Report)
$182 Billion Annually
Click this link or the screenshot below to go to the Prison Policy Initiative site that very thoroughly describes the money involved in mass incarceration.
Now What?
There are amazing organizations out there that are specifically working for criminal justice (not to mention all of the broader initiatives that are gaining the notoriety they deserve in this moment). Here is a non-exhaustive list:
- Equal Justice Initiative
- The Last Prisoner Project
- Prison Policy Initiative
- The Sentencing Project
- Justice Policy Center
- Restorative Justice
- Freedom for Immigrants
Empathy is crucial — the media has created a vision of “criminals” as less than human, when really every single person behind bars is just as human as you are. The Marshall Project publishes articles written by the people who are incarcerated.
Abolishing the prison system is possible! It is “not just the closing of prisons but the presence, instead, of vital systems of support that many communities lack” according to a powerful article by Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
Want more information?
- Watch 13th
- Read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- Check out the Incarceration Injustice Presentation I gave to my Business Law class in Spring 2020 at the DMBA — it gives an overview that is by no means comprehensive, but has more information than this article.
