This essay was written by Milica Starinac, a graduate student in Prof. Jana Sehnálková’s class, “Major Issues in Contemporary Public Debates” in the Department of North American Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Her class partnered with Dr. Mark Neuzil’s TommieMedia students to produce opinion pieces on issues of interest to Czech students.
Mass incarceration in the United States and the War on Drugs, which can be considered as its main catalyzer, are nothing but another “bullet-points on a long list” of mechanisms by which the history of racism continues to hold onto American society and its institutions.
Instead of taking responsibility for its continued racial disparities and tackling the structural problems which are the legacy of decades of slavery, segregation, discrimination and prejudice, U.S. leaders since Nixon have taken a different path. This has resulted in many Black people facing similar hardships as in the Jim Crow era. While this remains a complex issue needing an equally complex solution, it is important to identify the roots of the problem loud and clear, and without hesitation, which American institutions have failed to do over and over again.
The fact that Alexis de Tocqueville, a French diplomat from the 19th century, praised American prisons and penitentiaries for being more humane than the European ones almost two centuries ago seems quite strange right now. For a country that prides itself in being the champion of freedom, the United States sure has way too many citizens whose freedoms have been taken away.
The United States has only about 5% of the world’s population but accounts for almost a quarter of all the world’s prisoners. Since 1970, the number of those imprisoned and jailed in the U.S. has increased sevenfold, and it is racial minorities — especially Black people — who are disproportionately affected by these skyrocketing numbers. The incarceration rate for white people is 510 per 100,000, while for Black people it’s 2,306 per 100,000. About two-thirds of Black men born in the 1970s who dropped out of high school have spent time in prison. One out of nine Black children has a parent who is incarcerated. Even though the research has found that drug abuse is as common among white people as it is among Black people, it is Black people who are mainly incarcerated for drug offenses.
What do these horrifying mass incarceration numbers actually mean for the Black community in America? As legal scholar Michelle Alexander explains in her book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” a significant number of obstacles felons and ex-felons face in the United States today bear a striking resemblance to those in the era of Jim Crow laws.
Firstly, the majority of states impose restrictions on voting rights for felons and ex-felons. According to The Sentencing Project, over 7.4% of the Black community have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions, compared to only 1.8% for other racial groups.
Moreover, ex-convicts often find themselves homeless after leaving prison. This is due to the fact that public housing is unavailable to them, and if their family lives in public housing, they risk eviction by hosting a former convict. Landlords may legally refuse to rent to a former convict, which is yet another form of racial discrimination in housing.
Finding a job is a tremendous challenge for ex-felons as well. Not only do states have different laws prohibiting them from practicing certain professions, but nearly all job applications come with the notorious question: “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”
Sociologist Devah Pager conducted research that found that a criminal record affects Black men much more than white men. To make it worse, Pager also discovered that a white man with a criminal record is more likely to be hired than a Black man without one.
This is just the tip of the iceberg — ex-convicts are also banned from getting food stamps or a student loan for life. The law doesn’t make a distinction between violent and non-violent crimes when exercising this power over a former convict’s life, and often, neither does society.
While the Jim Crow laws were directed against Black people and the modern American criminal laws are seemingly colorblind, the way they are enforced results in too many Black people finding themselves in the position of second-class citizens.
As sociologist Bruce Western pointed out, “We’ve chosen the response of the deprivation of liberty for a historically aggrieved group, whose liberty in the United States was never firmly established to begin with.” The United States seems to have concluded it would be easier to punish than elevate the Black community. The U.S. needs to confront its racist legacy. Instead, its mass incarceration and criminal justice system does exactly the opposite — it upholds racial injustice.