America's Jim Crow gulag

[Hannah Bell]

The criminal justice system and especially the so-called "war on drugs" are the tip of the iceberg of racism in today's U.S. society. Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness makes the argument that mass incarceration is a modern system of control that has many similarities to Jim Crow, a system of racist, segregationist laws developed in the post-Civil War South that relegated African Americans to second-class status.

ALEXANDER DOCUMENTS the birth of mass incarceration in the U.S., beginning with the "law-and-order" rhetoric of populist bigot George Wallace and later Republican President Richard Nixon, who declared drugs "public enemy number one."

The Nixon administration consistently and consciously used coded racial language in an attempt to appeal to racist, white voters--the "Southern Strategy"--but the Reagan administration perfected this tactic. Under Reagan, incarceration rates skyrocketed, and the main vehicle for the dramatic increase was the "war on drugs." ...Alexander writes, "In the early 1980s, just as the drug war was kicking off, inner-city communities were suffering economic collapse. The blue-collar factory jobs that had been plentiful in the 1950s and 1960s had suddenly disappeared."

Against this economic backdrop, the Reagan administration revved up the "war on drugs," and within a few years, federal funding for anti-drug enforcement increased astronomically. According to Alexander, "Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million. Department of Defense anti-drug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991."

Determined to ensure that the "new Republican majority" would continue to support the extraordinary expansion of the federal government's law enforcement activities and that Congress would continue to fund it, the Reagan administration launched a media offensive to justify the war on drugs. Central to the media campaign was an effort to sensationalize the emergence of crack cocaine in inner-city neighborhoods...

http://socialistworker.org/2010/09/10/americas-jim-crow-gulag


Reagan cut low income housing money & used the savings to put black people in prison.

That mafia-funded toady should have never been born.

[tourivers83]

1. I like a little smoke. Smoke a little smoke.

For now, just legalize marijuana and let people grow a little for personal use. If we could do nationwide what may happen in California think of all the money we could save on stockpiling people in prisons and jails that did not need to be incarcerated. People, who could use medical marijuana for pain control, like me, could just grow what they need and not have to take so many bloody pills.

And think of all the dogs swat teams would not have to shoot.

"But really, I felt threatened by that vicious killer"

[sabrina 1]

2. The new slavery ~

I would have to check this, but I think I read recently that 1 in 100,000 Americans are incarcerated at any given time. The highest rate of incarceration ever, in the history of the world.

Legalize all drugs, then regulate them. That would empty out the prisons and destroy the drug cartels. I can't believe the money they are spending. We are a law-enforcement, war economy. And privatizing prisons only created a demand for more 'bodies' who also provide the cheapest labor for some big businesses.

'Land of the Free'! I think we need to drop those claims of 'freedom'. It's become a joke.

Good article. Reagan, Nixon and Bush the lesser were the worst thing that has happened to America. We don't need 'terrorists' to take away our freedoms.

[Hannah Bell]

3. one out of 100 adults, per the nyt.

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.

The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html



you can see why there's such a disconnect between black & white views of the world.

[sabrina 1]

4. Sorry, I meant to say '100'

It's a frightening statistic.

'One in 15 Blacks'. That truly is a disgrace. And 'one in nine Blacks between the ages of 20 and 34'. Their whole lives wasted behind bars.

This is not justice. How did this country sink so low? Fear drives support for this. A nation of cowering fools.

[Hannah Bell]

5. yes, i'm surprised more people aren't shocked. i told a relative the us

had a higher percent of people in prison than the ussr used to, & he said "it's because we have so much freedom".

he was a bircher, god rest his soul. he was also a nice, mellow guy, rockribbed "i love my country" type. a weird combination.

[sabrina 1]

6. That is a strange thing to say. It's Orwellian actually.

I don't know what will become of this country if we keep going like this.

[Hannah Bell]

7. We have more freedom, so we're more likely to misbehave, you know.

[sabrina 1]

8. Is there some reason why any democrat would try to hide these

facts?