Old and Current System of Mass Incarceration

 ‘The New Jim Crow' the authors use correspondence to show different parallels as well as similarities between the old Jim Crow caste systems and the current system of mass incarceration, which she suggests the creation of a contemporary or new age racial caste system. It is by descriptive statistics that at present that the U.S has a higher population of its African American male population imprisoned than an equivalent sample during the height of apartheid period in South Africa.

In Washington DC, it is estimated that 3 out of 4 young black men are more likely to serve time in jail and this statistics is no different across America's states. These figures have come about notwithstanding several studies which show that whites. However, Alexander in a minor authority points out the only dissimilarity between Jim Crow to mass imprisonment or detainment in the current system is that the present racial caste system poor whites individuals are also in judgment. She, however, suggests that 'Whites being imprisoned due to the war on drugs does not suggest a change in target communities. However, they are just collateral damage' (131).

This chapter is significant because the author compares the current system with the Jim Crow. She says that this system is more destructive and dangerous than before. This chapter is the most important because it touches on the current system and discusses on the system is rotten and how it is biased against the African Americans. She says that the racialized order of mass imprisonment blame the prisons for their fate. The systems hold that the prisons chose to participate in crime and thus they should carry their cross. This chapter exposes how the system is misused to discriminate the black people racially. The section also present more actual incidences when it talks about the speech of the then-presidential candidate Barack Obama where he urged black men to be better fathers. However, the author says that this never changed anything. Many black men have been incarcerated for small, and this has led to overrepresentation of the black people in the cells. Although many have criticized this comparison, the similarities that she identified are hard to deny. The differences are less.

This chapter is crucial for the people to read. To some people, the Jim Crow system could be a story to them. However, by reading this chapter, they can compare the current system with the Jim Crow. They can relate the two systems and understand that the system has hardly improved since Jim Crow. The people will also know why black people have been overrepresented in the cells in the United States. By reading this, people can understand and see how the people of color in the system have been treated as second-class citizens. They now get the reason behind the overrepresentation of the African Americans in the criminal justice system.

There are many strengths on the way Alexander frames the analysis in her book. One of the noteworthy characteristic of the book is manner at which she joins together many aspects such as the funding initiatives in the war on drugs, militarized policing practices and the targeted law enforcement, the obligatory minimum sentences, and the decisions that are made by the Supreme Court making its almost impossible to claim racial bias successfully. Alexander makes a clear suggestion that she does not explain that whites are sick people, but the employment of specific bias mechanisms seems to favor one race than the other. Although there are different notions about the Mass Imprisonment of the black community, however, the bending of the rules relates it to the old Jim Crow.

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