The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Alexander focuses here on how the racial caste system created by mass incarceration operates once a person leaves prison. She likens the condition of ex-prisoners in America to that of freedpeople living in the North prior to the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, or technically free men and women living under the terror and social inequities of the Jim Crow South. She writes, “The ‘whites only’ signs may be gone, but new signs have gone up—notices placed in job applications, rental agreements, loan applications, forms for welfare benefits, school applications, and petitions for licenses” (176). Having a felony on one’s record, she adds, leads to the same discrimination civil rights activists fought so hard to excise from American society in the 1960s.

In accepting a felony plea deal—even one that allows the defendant to avoid prison time—an individual enters a bleak reality that Alexander refers to as “civic death” (178). Individuals will likely not be told by their lawyer—and certainly not by prosecutors—that from then on, they may be denied federal health benefits, unemployment, public housing, food stamps, and student loans. In some cases, their driver’s license will be revoked, and they will certainly be ineligible for a wide array of professional licenses.