Alexander The New Jim Crows Essay

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The current state of incarceration in America, and the racial biases found within its application, is abhorrent; this fact only becomes more obvious as Alexander expounds upon the point with facts and statistics that reveal the prison system of the United States to be nothing but a tool for the oppression of minorities and the disadvantaged. Alexander, in her book The New Jim Crows: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness does a masterful job of making the case that the main effect of the War on Drugs in the United States has been the creation of a massive and permanent underclass, one composed overwhelmingly of African and Latino-Americans. Alexander specifically focuses on the statistics relating to mass incarceration, and how they …show more content…
The author relates several cases where innocent citizens either pled guilty to avoid a lengthy and expensive trial, suffering the consequences of being branded a drug offender for life, or lost their job and possessions while waiting out a lengthy process in which they were eventually found innocent. This is the sad reality of our legal system as it relates to the use of informants as key witnesses in drug cases, a point which Alexander makes clear in her explanation of how the police use informants to make cases without the kind of cautious exploration of the facts that should be required in such cases. Instead, Alexander shows, people have their lives permanently altered, often for offenses they did not commit, and are never found guilty of in front of a jury. Alexander further shows that this kind of application of the law creates a group of people, disenfranchised from normal society and fully liable to be discriminated against by employers and housing, that become recidivist. Small-time offenses lead to an inability to find employment, receive government assistance, and obtain secure housing; in many cases for people who never should have been swept up by the legal system to begin
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