History Of The Mass Incarceration System

The mass incarceration system has continuously oppressed, used, and devalued people of color since the era of slavery. Slavery started when there was a demand in labor to aid the production of crops such as tobacco, and African slaves were brought over to the United States. This is where the evolution began behind the concept of race, and the idea around white supremacy began to spread. In 1865, the thirteenth amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. By law, African Americans were “free” but were still inferior to white people. The birth of Jim Crow laws started in 1865, and implemented the state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern states. In the 1950’s and 60’s, the

The current U.S. prison system is overflowing with people who have been handed mandatory-minimum sentences because of the law that was implemented in the 90’s by Bill Clinton. It has been over a decade since that bill passed, and many people have suffered long enough because of it. I use to work in an employment program that helped people on parole obtain employment. Many of my clients were African American, and had committed crimes as an adolescent. I went to a conference once, and was told a statistic that stuck with me for years. I was told that African American men who do not graduate high school, have a 90% chance of being incarcerated. It has been over a century since slavery was abolished, yet the system is still set up for African Americans to fail. This policy could give people the opportunity to change their lives, and help them escape from the birdcage that society traps them in. Alexander (2012) described how the birdcage’s purpose is to trap the bird, and operates (together with the other wires) to restrict its freedom. The wires are arranged in a way that serve to enclose the bird to ensure that it cannot escape. This is exactly the way the law is restricting the freedom and opportunity for African Americans in the U.S. They are set up to go into the system because they are racially profiled, given harsher sentences, and given no support to rise above the oppression. When I think of mass incarceration and the New Jim Crow, I am reminded of the current Black Lives Matter movement. This movement is saying that Black lives matter, despite the centuries of slavery and oppression has shown that they don’t matter. Change will not happen for this country until African American’s are viewed as people worthy of opportunity and