I say we haven't ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid

To make matters worse, federal drug forfeiture laws allow state and local law enforcement agencies to keep, for their own use, up to 80 percent of the cash, cars, and homes seized from suspected drug offenders. You don't even have to be convicted of a drug offense; if you're just suspected of a drug offense, law enforcement has the right to keep the cash they find on you or in your home, or seize your car if drugs are allegedly found in it or "suspected" of being transported in the vehicle.

The fact that people of all colors have been ensnared by the drug war helps to preserve the system as a whole from serious critique, as it creates the impression - at a glance - that the war is being waged in an unbiased manner, even when nothing could be further from the truth.

For those interested in learning more about corporations and private individuals profiting from the caging of human beings, I highly recommend the book "Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration."

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

Our system of mass incarceration is better understood as a system of racial and social control than a system of crime prevention or control.