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A review by realadhdoug
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
4.75
Where do I even begin? I’m reading this for the second time a few years later and am still blown away by the substantial amount of evidence the author proposed as she compellingly draws a through line from slavery though Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement, and the war on drugs leading into the mass incarceration of the last several decades.
Here are just a few things I learned, relearned, found meaningful or was surprised by as a read it this time around:
- the idea that racism was the result of slavery, not the cause of it—the concept of race developing as a justification for enslaving people
- Convict leasing as a way to continue slavery after it had ended (that loophole in the 13th Amendment)
- The “southern strategy,” with Nixon’s guy revealing that the intention was to appeal to racism without overtly saying so
- Clinton’s 3-strikes law (and the 1-strike law for public housing—yikes) and its impact on the exponential growth of the prison population in the 1990s
- How cop shows today are analogous to old films depicting white enslavers as kind masters and enslaved Black people as grateful for their benevolence
- Most drug arrests weren’t actually for selling but for possession (in 2005, 4/5 was for possession and 1/5 was for sales)
- Marijuana accounted for 80% of drug arrests in the 1990s
- Between 1980 and 2000, the number of people incarcerated went from 300k to over 2 million. And by 2008, 1 in 31 adults (7 million Americans) were in prison or on parole
- Terry vs Ohio in 1968: decision saying police officer just needs “reasonable suspicion” to search someone’s person or property without a warrant (stop and frisk)
- The war on drugs was initially resisted by local police departments because drug usage was declining and they didn’t see it as a priority; the federal government bribed them with loads of grants for fighting drug crimes. This led to the militarization of police. SWAT, which had previously been used only for emergency situations, is now used primarily to serve narcotics warrants. From 1989-2001, at least 780 cases of flawed raids reached the appellate level
- Law enforcement is permitted to keep seized assets in drug raids and use them for their own purposes, incentivizing them to steal from civilians to bolster their budgets
- In 1986, mandatory minimums made it more likely for people to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit so that they get a reduced sentence
- In 2000, a study showed that white students used crack at 7 times the rate of Black students, and were equally likely to use marijuana. White teens were 1/3 more likely than Blsvk teens to sell illegal drugs. White youth had 3 times as many ER visits from drug overdose.
- Black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate 13x higher than white men
- Most people in prison are violent offenders, but most people sent to prison are not. That’s because violent offenders have longer terms, so people sent to prison on drug charges cycle through at a faster rate
- Lifelong discrimination (welfare programs, housing, jobs, firearms, voting, etc) against people with criminal records (they don’t have to be informed of these consequences when pleading guilty)
Yeah, there’s so much more. But I’m frankly tired of typing. Basically, if you read this in good faith, there is literally no way you could possibly think our criminal justice system is anything short of f’ed up.
It’s a hard thing to read full of hard realities to face. But I 100% recommend it to literally everyone living in the United States.
Here are just a few things I learned, relearned, found meaningful or was surprised by as a read it this time around:
- the idea that racism was the result of slavery, not the cause of it—the concept of race developing as a justification for enslaving people
- Convict leasing as a way to continue slavery after it had ended (that loophole in the 13th Amendment)
- The “southern strategy,” with Nixon’s guy revealing that the intention was to appeal to racism without overtly saying so
- Clinton’s 3-strikes law (and the 1-strike law for public housing—yikes) and its impact on the exponential growth of the prison population in the 1990s
- How cop shows today are analogous to old films depicting white enslavers as kind masters and enslaved Black people as grateful for their benevolence
- Most drug arrests weren’t actually for selling but for possession (in 2005, 4/5 was for possession and 1/5 was for sales)
- Marijuana accounted for 80% of drug arrests in the 1990s
- Between 1980 and 2000, the number of people incarcerated went from 300k to over 2 million. And by 2008, 1 in 31 adults (7 million Americans) were in prison or on parole
- Terry vs Ohio in 1968: decision saying police officer just needs “reasonable suspicion” to search someone’s person or property without a warrant (stop and frisk)
- The war on drugs was initially resisted by local police departments because drug usage was declining and they didn’t see it as a priority; the federal government bribed them with loads of grants for fighting drug crimes. This led to the militarization of police. SWAT, which had previously been used only for emergency situations, is now used primarily to serve narcotics warrants. From 1989-2001, at least 780 cases of flawed raids reached the appellate level
- Law enforcement is permitted to keep seized assets in drug raids and use them for their own purposes, incentivizing them to steal from civilians to bolster their budgets
- In 1986, mandatory minimums made it more likely for people to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit so that they get a reduced sentence
- In 2000, a study showed that white students used crack at 7 times the rate of Black students, and were equally likely to use marijuana. White teens were 1/3 more likely than Blsvk teens to sell illegal drugs. White youth had 3 times as many ER visits from drug overdose.
- Black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate 13x higher than white men
- Most people in prison are violent offenders, but most people sent to prison are not. That’s because violent offenders have longer terms, so people sent to prison on drug charges cycle through at a faster rate
- Lifelong discrimination (welfare programs, housing, jobs, firearms, voting, etc) against people with criminal records (they don’t have to be informed of these consequences when pleading guilty)
Yeah, there’s so much more. But I’m frankly tired of typing. Basically, if you read this in good faith, there is literally no way you could possibly think our criminal justice system is anything short of f’ed up.
It’s a hard thing to read full of hard realities to face. But I 100% recommend it to literally everyone living in the United States.