The war on drugs has been the engine of mass incarceration. Drug convictions alone constituted about two-thirds of the increase in the federal prison population and more than half of the increase in the state prison population between 1985 and 2000, the period of our prison system's most dramatic expansion.
Michelle AlexanderWhat does this system seem designed to do? As I see it, it seems designed to send people right back to prison, which is what happens about 70% of the time.
Michelle AlexanderNow that's hard for many people to believe, given that the media image of a drug dealer is a black kid standing on the street corner with his pants sagging down.
Michelle AlexanderBy waging the drug war and "getting tough" almost exclusively in the 'hood, we've managed to create a vast new racial undercaste in an astonishingly short period of time.
Michelle AlexanderIn my view, the critical questions in this era of mass incarceration are: What disturbs us? What seems contrary to expectation? Who do we really care about?
Michelle AlexanderMost criminologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have had relatively little to do with each other.
Michelle AlexanderCertainly youth of color, particularly those in ghetto communities, find themselves born into the cage. They are born into a community in which the rules, laws, policies, structures of their lives virtually guarantee that they will remain trapped for life. It begins at a very early age when their parents themselves are either behind bars or locked in a permanent second-class status and cannot afford them the opportunities they otherwise could.
Michelle Alexander