The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander is essential reading. It’s the only mandatory minimum sentence I’ll provide here.
If you’re looking to understand the history of incarceration in the United States, this book gives a thorough account of how we got here. Alexander gives an excellent overview of how slavery took shape in the United States, how policing emerged from that context, how poor Whites were turned against poor Blacks and leveraged a modicum of advantage that created the context for ongoing racism, how Jim Crow laws morphed slavery into a new form, and how the carceral prison system is a direct extension of the racist policies and climate that exist in the United States. It’s profoundly informative.
I think we can (almost) all agree that the prison system is highly problematic and needs reform / abolition. The New Jim Crow challenges many assumptions society holds about the prison system in the United States, even reforms that we (White people) believe to be progressive. Alexander offers counter-readings that expose the impact of prison reform practices on Black lives. For instance, even in the preface, Alexander discusses the idea of house arrest. Many people hail it is as being a more humane approach to punishment—surely superior to a prison cell. Yet, when we rely on technology to police, even the slightest problem can have severe consequences for Black prisoners. The “well-intentioned advocates” of technological solutions that advocate for monitors and algorithmic judgements neglect that the algorithms are already biased and that constant surveillance does not mean freedom. Consider also that ankle monitors have a series of problems: 1) the zone in which you’re able to travel may preclude you from having a job, seeing your family, raising your children, and so on. 2) The private GPS tracking company that provides the ankle monitor may charge you up to three hundred dollars a month for the “service” and 3) they are prone to malfunction, which may alert police to come to you immediately and bring you back to jail or deport you for breaking your conditions. We also know how much encounters between Black citizens and the police can escalate, which creates a new risk every time the GPS signal cuts out. Considering these challenges really illuminated for me the extent to which our alternatives to prison are often ill-advised or ill-considered from a specifically White lens.
We also cannot talk about modern prisons without discussing the War on Drugs. The anti-drug legislation that exists has a racial bias that targeted users of crack cocaine (as opposed to powder cocaine), which had different historical and racial contexts where Black citizens were more likely to use crack, while powder cocaine was for White people. [As an aside, she notes how it’s only when White people start using particular drugs that the conversation changes towards decriminalization or legalization—or even towards discussing the drug as a public health concern, rather than a concern with crime]. Alexander notes how only one senator commented on how the focus on crack was a scapegoat for other kinds of societal ills, arguing, “if we blame crime on crack, our politicians are off the hook. Forgotten are the failed schools, the maligned welfare programs, the desolate neighbourhoods, the wasted years. Only crack is to blame. One is tempted to think that if crack did not exist, someone somewhere would have received a federal grant to develop it.” It’s a poignant criticism and points to the trend we see consistently in discussing social ills. People talk about the fentanyl epidemic now and the increase in drug use—but how often do we talk about the root causes of those issues?
I’d like to focus a bit more on the notion of policy, since it becomes increasingly clear that there is a disconnect between policy and the context of peoples’ lived realities. That understanding is thoroughly explored in Alexander’s book and one case in particular struck me as significant. In 1988, the year I was born, there was a new Anti-Drug Abuse Act that was passed and created more punitive consequences for drug crime. For instance, it
“authorized public housing authorities to evict any tenant who allows any form of drug-related criminal activity on or near public housing premises.” When we think about where drug crime comes from, we can imagine the economic context of aspiring dealers and frequent users. To think that people who are already struggling could be evicted is a harsh sentence, but think also of some of the language used here: what does it mean for a tenant to “allow” any form of “drug-related” criminal activity “on or near” public housing premises? The vagueness of the language permits evictions that may not be justified. Consider, for instance, a tenant whose fifteen year old son, unbeknownst to her, agrees to lend car keys to a drug dealer so that he can drive ten blocks to sell. Did she allow this to happen? Is loaning car keys drug-related? Is ten blocks near the premises? These ambiguities permit selective evictions—and who will bear the brunt of them, I wonder?
Worse, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act “eliminated many federal benefits, including student loans, for anyone convicted of a drug offense.” Drug crimes are the result of desperation. Taking away opportunities further perpetuates the problems and renders it more likely that Black men will end up in prison. The act expanded the use of the death penalty for drug crimes and increased the mandatory minimum for drug offences, even for people with no previous criminal convictions (5 years for possession of cocaine with no evidence of intent to sell). Previously, the mandatory minimum for possessing any type of drug was one year.
The “tough on crime” discourse that emerged at the time failed to target the societal conditions that created crime and instead punished people unnecessarily. It’s kind of like how if we took all the money that went into policing homelessness, we could literally just give people homes. Alexander offers a number of anecdotes about “tough on crime” mentalities that are as horrific as they are depressing. For instance, if you’re okay with the death penalty, consider whether it was just for Ricky Ray Rector, a Black man convicted of murder who was put to death but was so “mentally impaired” that he “had so little conception of what was about to happen to him that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him until the morning.” I find that absolutely devastating and Alexander follows it up with a quote from Bill Clinton gloating that he could not be considered “soft on crime.” Why is that something we aspire to? Alexander’s juxtaposition of the two moments is laced with tragedy and a grim poetics.
Any time you hear people discussing crime, it would behove you to act like a three year old and keep asking why and not stop.
“I’m tough on crime.”
“Why?”
“Because these criminals are putting people in danger.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re selling drugs to little kids.”
“Why?”
“Because they can make a profit and don’t care.”
“Why?”
“Because…”
I’d keep that conversation going, but I don’t know how act tough on crime enough. Essentially, what it will come down to is that policies, laws, and their enforcement preclude people from living full lives. Surely it’s clear that crime is a response to inadequate housing, inadequate social services, inadequate mental health services, inadequate employment opportunities, and so forth. There’s a history for crime, and Alexander persuasive argues that that history is bound up with racism.
Some objectors will suggest that crime is “race-neutral”, but The New Jim Crow exposes these race-neutral necessities as false. For instance, people might argue that Black people are more prone to use and sell drugs when, in fact, that is not true, but rather reflects a cycle of racist policies and perceptions. Alexander notes that people have “differential access to private space” and that “influences the likelihood that criminal behaviour will be detected.” She gives the example of how wealthy people selling drugs are likely doing so in a private location, like inside a home, while poor people tend to have to share space and will go outside in order to conduct their exchanges. So, police catch crime in concentrated areas of the poor where drug enforcement is more easily achieved. Then, the statistics show more crime in that area so they continue going there, meaning they catch more people, and the cycle repeats.
Similarly, potential jurists cannot be excluded based on race, but supposedly race-neutral language can be used to exclude Black jurors. For instance, fashion choices stereotypical to Black males might be excluded as untrustworthy or undesirable. Someone may not like the look of someone’s hair. They don’t say Black, but that’s the underlying message. So even when cases go to trial, there is such little chance that one’s peers will truly be there to assess the case.
One thing we often forget is that incarcerated people do not exist in a vacuum. They have families, children. They have friends and communities that suffer when they are isolated from one another. When people are forcibly removed from their families, everyone suffers. Try that “why?” question out the next time some racist says that Black dads are never there for their kids. Why aren’t they there? Where are they? Why are they in prison? Why did they allegedly commit the crime? The New Jim Crow also blew my mind in its discussion of parole. One very common condition of parole is that you cannot associate with anybody that has a felony conviction. This means that when you go back to your high-poverty neighbourhood, if there are other people who have been convicted, you cannot even go out for groceries without getting a parole violation. One drug offence can mean that you are prohibited from all kinds of interaction—and that happenstance may have you violating the rules of parole and being sent back to jail. White people do not have the same challenges when finding a community after parole. Mass incarceration reproduces segregation. Alexander notes that people who might have escaped or transformed their communities instead find themselves “in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality, circulating between ghetto and prison.”
Politically, it’s worth noting that convicted people cannot vote. The convicted cannot voice their convictions, as it were. This note that felons are unable to vote disproportionately affects Black citizens, and indeed was initially designed to ensure an all-White electorate. Supposedly race-neutral barriers to voting have sprung up in all kinds of forms: a poll tax, a literacy test, a requirement not to have ever been convicted—all measures that are contextually targeted towards Black folk. This mass incarceration also seems to contribute to the trend of re-electing people who are “tough on crime”—-if the people who are mass-incarcerated could vote, we might actually see some reform or abolition of the prison system in lieu of more proactive social policies.
Alexander breaks down at every level how the prison system is designed with an anti-Black bias. From the focus of the legislation, to the enactment of it and the policing which follows, to the selection of jury members, to the extent of punishments, to our public discourse around crime: all of these are contributing factors to a profoundly racist system. In part of the book, she even discusses how “criminal” is a re-coding of “Black.” As people recognized that they could not be overtly racist, they had to change the language to a dog whistle other White people would understand.
The book is incisive, persuasive, informative, and all good things nonfiction should be. It opened my eyes to angles I previously hadn’t considered and provides the historical context essential for weighing in on any issues related to crime and punishment.
Read it. Spread the word. Make change.
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