The New Jim Crow
2000
- administration of criminal justice
- race relations
- race discrimination
- african american prisoners
- nyt:paperback_nonfiction=2012-01-14
- discrimination in criminal justice administration
- prisoners
- rassendiskriminierung
- social conditions
- strafjustiz
The story
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a 2010 book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States, but Alexander noted that the discrimination faced by African-American males is prevalent among other minorities and socio-economically disadvantaged populations. Alexander's central premise, from which the book derives its title, is that "mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow". --wikipedia
What it’s like
Measured, unhurried prose with the cadence of a courtroom argument: long sentences that build a case, then short ones that land it. The voice is sober and fiercely controlled, moving between legal history, policy detail and first-person encounters with people shut out of jobs, housing and the vote after a conviction. The mood is somber and indignant rather than despairing, the kind of book to read at a kitchen table with a pen nearby, in a few focused sittings over a week or two. Its emotional register is anger held steady by evidence, and its arc follows a system and the people it sweeps up more than any single protagonist. Violence is discussed rather than depicted, with no graphic scenes, but the subject is harsh: racial terror, prison conditions and the lasting penalties of a criminal record are described plainly and can feel heavy. It suits readers who want rigorous, morally direct social criticism and are ready to sit with uncomfortable history and statistics.
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