Mass inceration Flashcards
How many more black women are in communities than men?
3 mill more BW than BM
What does Alexander say the New Jim Crow is?
Mass incarceration is history repeating itself
- More BM in jail than slaves
- There are some differences
- War on Drugs allowed police free range with interrogation and can search anyone
- BP are then giving unfair trials
- Once arrested = lose all freedoms
- When they leave they have new rules on them, denied employment, housing, education and public benefits
Who came up with the Bird Cage theory?
What is the Bird cage theory?
Iris Young
- If you think of racism by examining one wire of the cage it’s difficult to understand how the bird is encaged
- Not all wires would’ve been specifically made to trap the bird but together is restricts freedom
Is the system to blame for mass incarceration?
- Many would say no, instead it was crime rates, black culture and bad schools
- Incarceration is officially ‘colourblind’
- Racism can also come from the basic structure of society
What are three phases of incarceration and how are the government involved?
- Round up of vast number- incentivised by cash reward from forfeiture laws and federal grant programs - unconstrained by constitutional rules
- Formal Control - defendants often denied meaningful legal representation and pressured to take a plead deal
- Invisible Punishment - sanctions imposed by operation of law rather than a judge - these laws operate collectively to ensure many wont integrate into society- discriminated against legally, education, employment, housing
Why is mass incarceration nothing new?
- every drug war, even alcohol has had racial bias
- American colonies passed laws barring criminals from a wide range of jobs and benefits, automatically dissolving their marriages
What has changed according to Alexander?
- Today Drug Wars is a new system of mass incarceration that governs not just small numbers of a racial or ethnic minority but entire communities
- Natures has changed no longer about prevention but rather management and control
What percentage of Illinois drug offence prisoners are AA?
What would they get when they live ?
90%
- When people are released given as little as $10 and often they return to poverty backgrounds
What does Alexander say the parallels are between Mass incarceration and Jim Crow?
Historical - Both in part from a desire from White elites to exploit the resentments and racials biases of the poor and working class whites for political and economic gain - Segregation-Mass Incarceration JC = elites compete to pass more oppressive laws MI= to prove who was tougher on crime
- Legalised discrimination
- Felony disenfranchisement - legal system failed to eradicate all the tactics from Jim Crow era
- Exclusion from Juries -JC = all white juries now = still very similar - larged number of BM been excluded from jury service as have records
- Closing Court Houses- JC = SC AA nit citizens now = closed courthouse claims of racial bias in justice system, from stops to bargaining and sentencing
- Racial Segregation - similar now by separating prisoners from mainstream society and the number of AA who return to ghettos
What are limits to Alexander’s New Jim Crow?
— each system has adapted to circumstances of the time
- perceived JC was explicitly race based but number of policies were colourblind poll taxes, literacy tests were formally race-neutral. Same is true in DW sale of drugs is neutral but enforced in highly discriminatory fashion
- Absence of racial hostility: no overt hostility - most Americans were pollsters by 1980 when the drug war was kicking off
- White victims of racial caste - Now there is direct harm to whites a WP can face prison - Yet must take into consideration some whites were also harmed inJC WW who dated BM harmed by anti-miscegenation laws
- Black support for get tough policies - Many AA support current system of control while can’t be said same for JC - argued they want more police and prisons as crime in ghettos is so bad - though they talk more about violent crimes than drug crimes
Why were blacks more effected?
- 1970 jobs in urban areas disappeared and unemployment gre
- 1954 black and white youth unemployment was equal by 1984 black unemployment rate had almost quadrupled
- Not due to black changes in values or culture but was the shift from deindustrialisation, globalisation and technological advancements, Urban factories shut down as the nation changed to a service of economy
- Collapse of inner-city economies coincided with the conservative backlash against CRM
What does sociologist Wacquant say about the new system?
- Difference between new and old is new doesn’t carry out the positive economic mission of recruitment and disciplining of the workforce.
- Instead it serves only to warehouse poor black and brown people for increasingly lengthy periods of time
Examples of closing court house doors:
JC- Dred Scott v Sanford = Scott tried to sue for his freedom as his owners took him over to free US - Supreme Court immunised the insitution of slavery from legal challenges on the grounds that AA were not citizens
NOW- McCleskey V Kemp 1987 - McClesky was convicted for 2 robberies and murder in Georgia - appealing saying the capital sentencing process was administered in a racially discriminatory manner - the court closed doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of crimina justice = MI off limits to challenges on the grounds of racial biass
Who is Khalief Browder?
22 New Yorker who committed suicide after being held for 3 years in Rikers island awaiting trial: was being questioned for stealing a backpack, the charges were ultimately dropped
- He refused to accept a plea deal as he said he didn’t do it
What does Berger argue criminalisation is?
- it’s a persistent feature of anti-black racism
- It’s a political project that began in response to the rebellious social movements
- Began with states giving greater resources and authority to police and prosecutors and expanding the criminal code before starting the worlds biggest prison construction programme
