Top Quotes: “The New Jim Crow” — Michelle Alexander

Background: I’ve been wanting to read this book for almost a decade! It’s by far the most famous critique of the prison-industrial complex, and it’s completely transformed the way we think about race and our prison system. Alexander specifically focuses on racial disparities in drug-related crimes (which is the reason the vast majority of prisoners are in the system) and draws compelling parallels between our nation’s past systems of racial control and this current one. I thought I knew a decent amount about prison reform already, but this book challenged many of my assumptions and exposed me to all-new facts and points of view — highly recommend if you haven’t gotten to it yet.

Introduction

“It is no longer socially permissible to use race as a justification for discrimination, social contempt, and exclusion. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans — in employment, housing, voting, education, public benefits, and exclusion from jury service. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.”

“Reagan announced the War on Drugs in 1982, before crack became an issue in the media or a crisis in poor black neighborhoods. The Reagan administration hired staff to publicize the emergence of crack in 1985 as part of a strategic effort to build public and legislative support for the ‘war.’”

“In less than 30 years, the U.S. penal population exploded from 300,000 to over 2 million. No other country imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. In DC, 3/4 of young black men (and nearly all of those in its poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison. Similar rates can be found in black communities across America. In major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80% of young black men now have criminal records. These young men are now part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked out of mainstream society.”

“Crime rates in the U.S. have not been markedly higher than those of other Western countries — despite similar crime rates, each government chose to impose different levels of punishment.”

“In the mid ’70s, most respected criminologists were predicting that the prison system would soon fade away and that prisons created, rather than prevented, crime.”

“1 in 3 black men will serve time if trends continue. More than half of all young adult black men are either in prison or jail or on probation or parole.”

“Imagine if ’40s civil rights organizations hadn’t placed Jim Crow segregation at the forefront of their racial justice agenda. It’d have seemed absurd, given that racial segregation was the primary vehicle of racialized social control then. This book argues that mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow, and that all those who care about social justice should fully commit themselves to dismantling this new racial caste system.”

The Rebirth of Caste

“The rules and reasons the political system employs to enforce racial hierarchy evolve and change as they are challenged. This ‘preservation through transformation’ is the process through which white privilege is maintained, though the rules and rhetoric change. When slavery and Jim Crow appeared to die, they were actually reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time.”

“Following the collapse of each system, there’s a period of confusion in which those who are most committed to racial hierarchy search for new means to achieve their goals within the rules of the game as currently defined, eventually adopting a new system of control — to date, this has never been avoided. This feat has been achieved largely by appealing to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class whites. As new systems of caste have evolved, they have become perfected, arguably more resistant to challenge and thus capable of enduring for generations to come.”

“Bacon’s Rebellion in 1675 was a collaboration between black slaves and also poorly treated white indentured servants and other poor whites — both big labor pools at the time. After it, many more slaves were shipped directly from Africa since they were less likely than English-speaking slaves from the West Indies to form alliances with poor whites. Deliberately, the planter class extended special privileges to whites in an effort to drive wedges between them and black slaves. White settlers were allowed greater access to Native American lands, could police slaves through slave patrols and militias, and got labor guarantees.”

“After three years of Reconstruction, 15% of elected officials in the South were black, up from virtually zero. Literacy rates climbed and blacks began to open successful businesses. But many Reconstruction laws had loopholes or weren’t enforced since enforcement required black people to take their cases to federal court, a costly, time-consuming procedure impossible for most. Plus, there were threats of violence if they did.”

“A resurgent KKK fought a terrorist campaign against Reconstruction government leaders with bombings, lynchings, and gun violence — resulting in the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, no further enforcement of civil rights legislation, and virtually all Freedmen’s Bureau funding being cut.”

“The 13th Amendment left one notable exception: slavery remained appropriate as punishment for a crime. Tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested under vagrancy and mischief laws at the time and sold as forced laborers, enduring torture and shockingly high death rates.”

“The Populist movement of the 1890s was predicated on a searing critique of large corporations and the wealthy elite. It viewed the privileged class as conspiring to keep poor blacks and whites locked into a subordinate political and economic system. Populists made strides toward racial integration and achieved more harmony between blacks and whites in the South than perhaps at any other time. They achieved stunning victories throughout the South. Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate effort to drive a wedge between poor whites and black people, encouraging lower-class whites to retain a sense of superiority over black people and making it less likely they would sustain interracial political alliances aimed at toppling the white elite. By 1900, every state in the South had strict segregation laws.”

“After Brown v. Board, the KKK reasserted itself as a powerful terrorist organization and 50 new Jim Crow laws were passed in the South. Desegregation slowed to a halt.”

“By 1963, 20,000 people involved in the Civil Rights Movement had been arrested. In 1963 alone, 1,000 desegregation protests occurred across the country.”

“Between 1964 and 1969, the percent of black people registered to vote in Mississippi increased from 7% to 67%.”

“After civil rights victories, activists turned their efforts to economic problems and the Civil Rights Movement evolved into a Poor People’s Movement.”

“Proponents of racial hierarchy found that they could install a new racial caste system by demanding ‘law and order’ rather than ‘segregation forever.’”

“Crime rose in the ’60s — street crime quadrupled and homicide rates doubled due to the rise of Baby Boomers to the 15–24 age group which historically has been responsible for the most crimes. Southerners blamed this rise on desegregation and civil rights leaders encouraging rule-breaking.”

“Black support for harsh responses to urban crime — support borne of desperation and concern over security — helped provide political cover for conservative politicians who saw an opening to turn back the clock on racial progress.”

“Members of Congress who voted against civil rights measures began to proactively design crime legislation.”

“A disproportionate share of the costs of integration and racial equality had been borne by lower and lower-middle class whites, who were suddenly forced to compete on equal terms with blacks for jobs and status and who lived in neighborhoods adjoining black ghettos. These children — not the children of wealthy whites — attended schools most likely to fall under busing orders. The affluent white liberals who were pressing the legal claims of blacks and other minorities were largely immune to the costs of their efforts, allowing conservatives to characterize the liberal Democratic establishment as being out of touch with ordinary working people.”

“In 1968, race eclipsed class as the organizing principle of American politics and by 1972, attitudes on racial issues rather than on socioeconomic status were the primary determinant of a voter’s political identity. There was a dramatic erosion in the belief among working-class whites that the condition of the poor, or fail to prosper, was the result of a faulty economic system that needed to be challenged.”

“The War on Drugs shifted the Justice Department’s attention from white-collar criminals to street crime. At the time, only 2% of Americans viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation. (By 1989, 64% did due to intentional partnership with media to sensationalize.) Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million. The Department of Defense and DEA had similar budget bumps. Funding for the National Institute on Drug Abuse was reduced from $274 million to $57 million and anti-drug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.”

“Just as the drug wars were kicking off, blue-collar factory jobs that had been plentiful in the ’50s and ’60s had suddenly disappeared due to technology and movement of jobs abroad. This left largely uneducated black people in ghettos jobless. Lack of employment increased incentives to sell drugs.”

“The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 included mandatory minimum sentences for the distribution of coke and far more severe punishment for crack. The 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act authorized public housing to evict tenants who allowed any form of drug-related criminal activity to occur on or near public housing, expanded use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses, and added a five year minimum sentence for possession of coke, even without intent to sell and even for first-time offenders.”

“Among whites, those expressing the highest degree of concern about crime also tend to oppose racial reform, and their punitive attitudes are unrelated to their likelihood of victimization — rural whites are often the most punitive even though they’re least likely to be crime victims. The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, allowed whites opposed to racial reform the unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress without being exposed to the charge of racism.”

“The Clinton administration’s ‘tough on crime’ policies resulted in the largest increase in prison inmates of any President. His 1994 crime bill mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders and authorized $16 billion for state prisons and police forces to expand.”

“The government didn’t reduce the budget devoted to the management of the urban poor by cutting welfare and public housing — it simply reallocated it to police and prisons. Clinton also mad it easier for federal housing projects to exclude anyone with a criminal history.”

“90% of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in some states were black or Latino. The new Jim Crow was born.”

The Lockdown

“500,000 people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, compared to 40,000 in 1980 — an increase of over 1000%.”

“In the U.S., only one out of five drug arrests was for sales (rather than possession). Most people in state prison for drug offenses have no history of violence or significant selling history.”

“Arrests for marijuana possession accounted for 80% of the growth in drug arrests in the ‘90s.”

“The Supreme Court has eviscerated 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures for drugs so much that some charge that a virtual ‘drug exception’ exists to the Bill of Rights.”

“The Supreme Court has decided cases that permit officers to stop pedestrians or pull over cars to search for drugs, so long as they consent to the search or commit any traffic violation. The vast majority of people will consent and aren’t aware they can legally say ‘no.’ And officers even have the right to arrest people who don’t consent or use drug-sniffing dogs on them.”

“Operation Pipeline trained 25,000 cops between 1984 and 2000 to use a minor traffic violation as pretext to pull someone over. 99% of these stops result in no citation.”

“Local and state police departments were initially resistant to the War on Drugs, but huge cash grants to law enforcement agencies that made drug enforcement a priority changed their minds. Between 1997 and 1999 alone, the Pentagon handed 3.4 million orders of military equipment to domestic police agencies — supporting a literal War on Drugs.”

“In 1972, there were just a few hundred paramilitary SWAT drug raids per year. By the 2001, there were 40,000 annually. Innocent people are often killed in these raids. In many cases, victims receive no follow up, even to fix busted doors or other physical damage.”

“The Reagan administration gave law enforcement agencies the authority to keep for their own use the vast majority of cash and assets they seize when waging the drug war. Neither the owner of the property nor anyone else need be charged with a crime, much less found guilty of one. Indeed, a person could be found innocent of criminal conduct and the property could still be subject to forfeiture. Most lacked the resources to hire an attorney or pay the considerable court costs. There’s no court-appointed attorney for these cases.”

“A 2000 reform spurred by wealthy people’s property being seized required that police prove the property was involved in a crime to keep it — still not enough.”

“Relatively little opposition to the Drug War currently exists. It is no longer a special program or politicized project; it is simply the way things are done.”

“Tens of thousands of poor people to jail every year without ever talking to a lawyer and those who do meet with a lawyer for a drug offense often only spend a few minutes discussing their options before an important decision.”

“80% of defendants can’t afford a lawyer. Sometimes public defenders have over 100 clients at a time. In Wisconsin, anyone who earns more than $3,000/year is considered able to afford an attorney so 11,000 poor people per year go to court without representation.”

“Mandatory minimums for drug offenses mean that nearly all drug-related cases are resolved by a guilty plea in exchange for some sort of leniency by the prosecutor — innocent people often plead guilty. The typical mandatory sentence for a first time drug offense in a federal court is 5–10 years; in other developed countries, this would merit no more than 6 months in jail, if jail time is imposed at all.”

“Mandatory sentencing laws have forced judges to impose sentences for drug crimes that are often longer than those violent criminals receive. They also mean that judges can’t exercise discretion — leniency for cases of extreme poverty, abuse, or addiction.”

“A life sentence for a first-time drug offense has been consistently upheld by the Supreme Court.”

“California’s Three Strikes Law mandates a sentence of 25 years to life for recidivists convicted of a third felony, no matter how minor. One arrest can result in multiple strikes.”

“One study suggests the entire 350 million to 2 million prison population increase from 1980 to 2001 can be explained by sentencing policy changes (not crime rate).”

“In a study, 30% of released prisoners were rearrested within six months of release and 68% within three years. Only a small minority are rearrested for violent crimes.”

“In 1980, only 10% of all prison admissions were parole violations; 20 years later, 35% were. Two-thirds were returned for technical violations like missing a parole officer appointment, failing to maintain employment, or failing a drug test.”

The Color of Justice

“In 7 states, African Americans constitute 80–90% of all drug offenders sent to prison. Since 1983, African American prison admissions have risen to more than 26 times the level they were in 1983 vs. 22 times for Latinx people and 8x for white people. Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, 3/4 of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latinx.”

“A 2000 study reported that white students use cocaine at 7 times, crack at 6 times, and weed equally as much as a black students. White youth have 3 times the number of drug-related ER visits as their African American counterparts.”

“The racial bias in the drug war is a major reason why 1 in 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared in 1 in 106 white men.”

“While black men have higher rates of violent crime, violent crime is not responsible for mass incarceration. Homicide offenses account for 0.4% of the past decade’s growth in the federal prison population, while drug offenders account for 61% of the expansion. In the state system, < 3% of new court commitments to state prisons typically involve people convicted of homicide.”

“How does a formally colorblind criminal justice system achieve such racially discriminate results? The first step is to grant law enforcement officers extraordinary discretion regarding whom to stop, search, arrest, and charge for drug offenses, thus ensuring that conscious and unconscious racial beliefs and stereotypes will be given free rein. Then, the damning step: closer the courthouse doors to all claims that the criminal justice system operates in racially discriminate fashion. Demand that anyone who wants to challenge racial bias in the system offer, in advance, clear proof that the racial disparities are the product of intentional racial discrimination — evidence which will almost never be available in the era of colorblindness.”

“Drug law enforcement is unlike most other forms of law enforcement because there’s no clear perpetrator and victim — neither the purchaser nor the seller of the drugs has any incentive to call law enforcement. Also, it’s popular. In any given year, more than 10% of Americans violated drug laws. But due to resource constraints (and the politics of the drug war), only a small fraction are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated. Strategic choices must be made about whom to target and which tactics to employ. Where should the drug war be fought and who should be taken prisoner?”

“Under Reagan, drug use, once considered a private, public health matter, was reframed through political rhetoric and media imagery as a grave threat to the national order. Calls for ‘war’ at a time when the media was saturated with images of black drug crime left little doubt about who the enemy was.”

“The Supreme Court has ruled that statistical evidence of race-based discrimination in prosecution does not violate the equal protection clause — a prosecutor’s admission of bias is necessary because discovery from the prosecution regarding changing patterns and motives and jury deliberations are inadmissible.”

“Until Obama, crack was sentenced at a rate 100x that of powdered cocaine.”

“Georgia’s ‘2 strikes and you’re out’ law mandates a life sentence for second-time drug offenders.”

“No one has more power in the criminal justice than the prosecutor, who is free to dismiss a case for any reason or no reason at all. The prosecutor is also free to file more charges against a defendant than can be realistically proven in court. These sometimes life-and-death decisions are totally discretionary and unreviewable and have no standards.”

“Among youth who’ve never been sent to a juvenile prison before, African Americans were 6x as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes.”

The Cruel Hand

“When a defendant pleads guilty to a minor drug offense, nobody will likely tell him that he may be permanently forfeiting his right to vote as well as his right to serve on a jury. Unbeknownst to this offender, he may be ineligible for food stamps, public housing, federal education assistance, a driver’s license, the military, gun ownership, federal security clearance, or certain employment and professional licenses.”

“These sanctions send the strong message: you are no longer wanted. Many ex-offenders lose their children, their dignity, and eventually their freedom — landing back in jail after failing to play by the rules that seem hopelessly stacked against them.”

“Housing discrimination against felons is legal. Thousands of them go homeless — a study found that 1 in 4 people in homeless shelters had been incarcerated in the previous year. A California study reported that 30–50% of individuals on parole in San Francisco or LA were homeless. 40 of 50 states plus DC require parolees to maintain gainful employment or else more prison time. Plus, work is fundamental to the human existence and deprivation of it is strongly associated with depression and violence. Yet employers in most states can deny jobs even to people who were arrested but never convicted of any crime.”

“Newly released prisoners are required to make payments to a host of agencies like probation departments and courts. Many states utilize ‘poverty penalties’ — piling on additional late fees, payment plan fees, and interest when individuals are unable to pay for their debt, often enriching private debt collectors in the process. Some states re-emprison people with debt.”

“It is difficult to imagine a system better designed to create — rather than prevent — crime.”

The New Jim Crow

“There are nearly 3 million more black adult women than men in U.S. black communities — a gender gap of 26% (it’s 37% in NYC). The comparable disparity for whites is 8%. More African American men are in prison/jail or on probation/parole than were enslaved in 1850. More are disenfranchised today than in 1870, the year of the 15th Amendment.”

“In Illinios in 2001, there were more black men in the state’s correctional facilities just on drug charges than the total number of black men enrolled in undergraduate programs at state universities.”

“Black and brown people are the principal targets in this war; white people are collateral damage.”

“Drunk driving in the ’80s resulted in more deaths than crack — yet the minimum sentence for a first offense is two days in jail typically vs. five years for crack. White men comprised about 78% of the arrests for this offense in 1990, when new drunk driving mandatory minimums were being adopted.”

“Although drunk driving carries a far greater risk of violent death than the use or sale of illegal drugs, the societal response to drunk driving has generally emphasized keeping the person functional and in society, while attempting to respond to the dangerous behavior through treatment and counseling. People charged with drug offenses, though, are disproportionately poor people of color. They are typically charged with felonies and sent to prison.”

“Punishment becomes more severe when drug use is associated with people of color but softens when it is associated with whites.”

“In the early 1900s, marijuana was perceived — rightly or wrongly — as a drug used by blacks and Mexican Americans, leading to the Boggs Act of the ’50s, penalizing first-time possession of marijuana with a sentence of 2–5 years in prison. In the ’60s though, when marijuana became associated with the white middle class and college kids, commissions were promptly related to study if marijuana was really as harmful as once thought. By 1970, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention Act differentiated marijuana from other narcotics and lowered federal penalties.”

“Black men do have higher rates of violent crime. But when researchers have accounted for joblessness, differences in violent crime rates between young black and white men disappear.”

“The genius of the current caste system, and what distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes and that’s when they’re locked up or locked out. But therein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. If the worst thing you have done is speed 10 miles per hour over the speed limit on the freeway, you’ve put yourself and others at more risk of harm than anyone smoking marijuana in his living room.”

The Fire This Time

“Poverty and unemployment statistics do not include people who are behind bars, leading standard estimates to underestimate the true jobless rate by as much as 24% for less-educated black men.”

“If we hope to return to the rate of incarceration of the ’70s — a time when many civil rights activists believed imprisonment rates were egregiously high — we would need to release 4 out of 5 people behind bars today. Prisons would have to be closed across the U.S, hurting rural jobs and economic growth. If 4 out of 5 people were released from prisons alone, far more than 1 million people could lose their jobs.”

“Imprisonment now creates far more crime than it prevents, by ripping apart fragile social networks, destroying families, and creating a permanent class of unemployables. The War on Drugs is a major cause of poverty, chronic unemployment, broken families, and crime today.”

“75% of incarceration has had absolutely no impact on crime, despite costing nearly $200 billion annually.”