Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

newjimcrow.com

An eye-opening must read: This book (read also Unfair by Adam Benforado) shows the gross injustice in our criminal justice system, which creates a racial caste system, and it makes the case for ending mass incarceration and the War on Drugs.

"You are now awakened to a dark and ugly reality that has been in place for decades and that is continuous with the racist underside of American history from the advent of slavery onward." 

It also shows the need to extend compassion and care to all human beings and to stop using the label "criminal" to dehumanize and disregard people and then excuse the warehousing and caging of them.

Instead, the author offers, "...a positive vision of what we can strive for—a society in which all human beings of all races are treated with dignity, and have the right to food, shelter, health care, education, and security."

It was shocking and horrifying to read:

How the prison system has expanded when it could have/should have collapsed: In 1972 criminologists were predicting the end of the prison system (which had been shown not to deter crime). Fewer than 350,000 people were incarcerated. Today, more than 2 million people are in jail.

• In 1973, the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, which issued a recommendation that “no new institutions for adults should be built and existing institutions for juveniles should be closed.”based on their finding that “the prison, the reformatory and the jail have achieved only a shocking record of failure. There is overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it.” 

About the gross disparity in the number of African Americans and Latinos incarcerated: 90 percent of the people imprisoned for drug offenses in many states are black or Latino. 

• "The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid." 

• "Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino." 

• "More African American adults are under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole— than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began."

About the poverty of people being put into jails: "Two-thirds of people detained in jails report annual incomes under $12,000 prior to arrest."  

About the unfairness of the system: 

• "Most Americans probably have no idea how common it is for people to be convicted without ever having the benefit of legal representation, or how many people plead guilty to crimes they did not commit because of fear of mandatory sentences." 

• "As of September 2009, only 7.9 percent of federal prisoners were convicted of violent crimes." 

• "The typical mandatory sentence for a first-time drug offense in federal court is five or ten years. By contrast, in other developed countries around the world, a first-time drug offense would merit no more than six months in jail, if jail time were imposed at all." 

How a system, which costs $200 billion annually, promotes crime (and serves as a racist system of social control over black and brown people): "Imprisonment, they say, now creates far more crime than it prevents, by ripping apart fragile social networks, destroying families, and creating a permanent class of unemployables."

Pairs well with: Unfair by Adam Benforado, the March graphic novels by John Lewis and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehesi Coates

Notable: I'd place this book among other life-changing reads that have changed my actions and my political priorities: Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by Peter Singer, and The China Study by T. Colin Campbell.

Quotable: 

 "Martin Luther King Jr. called for us to be lovestruck with each other, not colorblind toward each other. To be lovestruck is to care, to have deep compassion, and to be concerned for each and every individual, including the poor and vulnerable."

"'You gotta hate the crime, but love the criminal.' This is not a mere platitude; it is a prescription for liberation. If we had actually learned to show love, care, compassion, and concern across racial lines during the Civil Rights Movement—rather than go colorblind—mass incarceration would not exist today."

"Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the problem."

 “It is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights.” — Martin Luther King Jr.