Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press, 2010. Print. Mauer, Marc, and Meda Chesney-Lind. Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment. New York: New Press, 2002. Print.
2. How is crime control politicized? Which authors in this course have given you the most theoretical insight into this problem? Explain.
Victor Rios wrote the book Punished, which was published in 2011 and in it, he was able to give some significant insights into the political crime control frameworks that go on at the legislative level and show how those trickle down through the court system, dispersed by the police and literally onto the streets.
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The boys recognized and internalized these controls and outright rejected them. Rios pointed out the deviant politics in his book by highlighting the story of Darius, who mocked the police and the teachers who labeled his behavior as deviant though they recognized this magnetized the situation. But the boys, rightly so were tired, they had no one on their side protecting them from an over politicized system that criminalized just about every action they …show more content…
Some of those major players included Irving Picard, who was asked to serve as a court appointed trustee to liquidate Madoff’s investments to his victims by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Though his role was controversial because he filed suit against Madoff and his business investors in order to recover net funds and profits not including principals to repay the victims, Picard played a pivotal role in helping victims recover (somewhat) financially from their losses. Thus far, he managed to recover in excess of ten billion dollars for distribution to Madoff’s victims.
Attorney Helen Davis Chaitman a lawyer in New Jersey and Victims’ Advocate for the Madoff victims was not a fan of Picard. The chairman went so far as accusing Picard of not taking the plight of victims seriously after he suggested he would need time to determine how a judge’s decision to dismiss part of his lawsuit would affect the distribution of payments to Madoff’s victims. In Chaitman’s opinion, the judge’s decision should not affect the victims being made whole and they should not have to wait. Not to mention Picard’s fees are quite high for the work he is
While the main focus of the case is the owner, the article briefly mentions that four of the owner's employees conspired along with him, and that they all had pleaded guilty whereas the owner elected to settle the claims against him in court. After working through the language of the court case, I was
She was an associate professor of law and directed the Civil Rights Clinics at the Stanford Law School. Her award with a Soros Justice Fellowship supported her book, The New Jim Crow. The main discussion in this book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is about racism. Racism is defined as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
In the book, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, readers are given a look at the long and extensive history of racism towards African-Americans. From there, the reader is shown how racism towards African-Americans has not gone away and is still very much common in modern society. Throughout the novel, Alexander argues and discusses how African-Americans are being discriminated against in the form of mass incarceration. “Mass incarceration refers not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison” (Alexander 14). The War On Drugs can largely be put to blame for the increase in incarcerations.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a non fiction book written by Michelle Alexander, a well known civil rights lawyer, is a book that every American citizen should read. Alexander’s book cover is of three metal bars and two strong black hands holding them tightly. The book spent multiple weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list and has a foreword written by Cornel West, he is a well known and respected social activist. The book discuss how the new system of oppression for people of color in the United States is mass incarceration. Jim Crow laws were a systematic way to segregate and discriminate against black people.
In her article “The New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander powerfully argues that the American prison system has become a redesigned form of disenfranchisement of poor people of color and compares it to the racially motivated Jim Crow laws. She supports her assertions through her experiences as a civil rights lawyer, statistical facts about mass incarceration, and by comparing the continued existence of racial discrimination in America today to the segregation and discrimination during the Jim Crow laws. Alexander’s purpose is to reveal the similarities of the discriminatory and segregating Jim Crow laws to the massive influx of incarceration of poor people of color in order to expose that racism evolves to exist in disguised, yet acceptable forms
Jim Crow, slavery and the mass incarceration are system of laws, and policies to maintain power inferiority among people of color. Alexander asserts that colorblindness cause Jim Crow to “continue” to exist. Specifically, the U.S Supreme court is not interested in how severe the racism is and its impacts. Therefore, racial injustice continues to exist, and that mass incarceration is like the Jim
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is a non-fiction introduction in the novel “They say, I say” by Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. The New Jim Crow is written to educate society on the discrimination and exclusion that African Americans are facing in the United States; the same discrimination and exclusion they faced when the Jim Crow laws took place. Michelle Alexander forms her evidence from her own experience fighting for the civil rights of others and she also uses people of colors experiences with losing their civil rights from being labeled a “felon” and she uses statistics to help her readers better visualize the extent of African American incarceration, these techniques provide the readers with accurate
He supports his claim by first analyzing the role politics played in mass incarceration, as well as how media portrayals incited reactions and misrepresented minorities, then he determines how public opinion affected policy, and finally, he addresses the degree to which punitiveness caused the rise and fall of support for mass incarceration. Enns ' book is helpful to my research paper because it examines the racial disparities in sentencing, as well as, discriminatory attitudes and perspectives that determine
To ignore mass incarceration as a form of racism because of the strives made in civil rights of American History over the last 60 years, is to assume ignorance that will eventually topple America. This caste system opens the door and justifies other forms of civil abuses. One cannot help the color of skin that they are born with, either should his or her life trajectory be set or punished for it. Bibliography Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.
The criminal justice system may be more corrupt than the people who fill our prisons. It is amazing to see the many ways that certain parts of society actually benefit from the current system we support. This book,The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get Prison, by authors Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton, has open my eyes to a very corrupt idealism. They are very precise in their supporting examples as well by walking the reader through each step and analogy.
Critical criminology is the study of the relationship between crime and power.
Additionally, The state fund that compensates people when their lawyers misuse their money paid out a total of $282,328 on twenty-eight claims against Christina” (Koenig, The Best Defense is a Good Defense). This means not only was she taking unjust amounts of money from Adnan’s family but a total of over 280 thousand dollars from 28 cases. Adnan had an unfair trial because
Michelle Alexander argues in her introduction to the New Jim Crow that the racial caste in America has not ended and that it just has been redesigned. She highlights the ways that the justice system of the United States controls blacks through deliberately imposed legal restrictions. The United States has the leading incarceration rates in the world and most of the individuals involved with the country’s correctional system are African-American men. This essay seeks to discuss the author’s overall argument in the book. The essay will also discuss how the topics in the first three chapters of the book help Alexander develop this argument.
Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.