an author opened my eyes for the real dimensions and roots of the prison industry as Alexander did, she nails down the problems intrinsic to an injustice system growing like a virus or tumor in a once prospering nation.
Ill compareexamples of systems, from best to worst, to demonstrate that its not just a problem of hidden, suppressed racism, but a question of the societal model too.
. Fair, sustainable, eco social, Keynesian, Nordic model countries with rehabilitative justice such as Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, . .
. Democratic countries with a renewed, played down, ignored, and not indemnified history of colonialism, oppression, slavery, and full of sick philosophies, politics, economics, and humanities,
. Dictatorships with exploitative economic models,
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the population lives in pointandcountries and that a change can just come with a sustainable and fair economic and societal model, because as long as stupid doctrines and agenda dominate any aspect of life, economy, education, and even the public debate about the future is infected, there is no hope.
Look at what rehabilitative justice and punitive justice are related too, take for instance these quizzes showing how other mentalities, ideologies, and faith influence and poison all other aspects of mentality and the lives of other people.
sitelink politiscales. net/
sitelink github. io/
sitelink politicalcompass. org/
Extremism of any kind in one single aspect, especially certain, not all, kinds of conservatism and right wing politics, not to forget this eye for an eye thing and the wannabe break free market, tend to be against restorative/rehabilitative justice, adoring enforcing retributive/ punitive justice and a destructive and unnecessary system.
There is the old saying that prisons make criminals and nothing could be closer to the truth, because being incarcerated with people with terrible lives full of poverty, abuse, violence, mental health issues, that forced them to be criminal to survive together with a state that doesnt care about them, instead of helping these individuals to resocialize is the perfect breeding ground for an endless continuation of a vicious circle.
After surviving in circumstances so cruel and inhuman most wont go out without permanent psychological trauma, scarred for life, PTSD, and new mental issues added to the ones that led to imprisonment, the delinquents are stigmatized, branded, the state does as much as possible to make their life even bleaker, without hope of resocialization or a new beginning, forcing them to become criminal again to simply survive, because they have close to no other perspective.
Its nothing else than a feudalistic socioeconomic status system with very few chances of
escape if one has the bad luck of being born poor and not white.
If one looks at the numbers, statistics, and timelines and compares the War on drugs that destroyed black communities as much as the narcotics, the main economic doctrine, and the politics, one sees a parallel of extreme increase of all problems in the US, while many European countries, especially Scandinavia, have nothing like that.
It might also be a good idea to take a look at the interconnection of public private partnerships, prison industry, and the possible context with the development, because its a bit as if the car industry could define the safety standards or the food industry the legal limits for contamination with whatever, there are enough chemicals to choose from, or Big Pharma You get the picture.
This could lead to the interest of both the companies and the state to, well, imprison as many people as long as possible to make money,
Not even to mention the conscious and subliminal racist thinking that is still poisoning many influential minds, that enabled their parents to transform the jurisdiction and legislation, to more or less secretly and subtly integrate Jim Crow in a new, even more vicious way.
Because it seems legit and fair for the conservative, rich, opportunistic, and stubborn wing who thinks that they have full rights, while people of color are just three fifths.
They would immediately call their major or governor or, why not, the president, doesnt seem improbable these days, if the police would dare to make a crackdown in their rich gated community.
Ok, the officers would possibly not even come close, because the high security standards and guards would possibly not let them in, Im sorry gentlemen, you have no permission to disturb our residents, Why dont you try it in the red lined, poor, hopeless areas, guess youll have much more luck there to boost your busts, “
Because bigoted, politically correct people dont judge people because of color, but by asking if they are poor, evil, dangerous criminals who, after leaving prison, deserve exclusion from jury and voting, housing, education, and employment discrimination, most citizenship rights, or honest, hard working, good citizens.
Just progressive social, economic, and political reforms, Big History, and a reprocessing of the past, including redemption, could stop the madness, But its still a long way to go, because as long as people think that one black president means that racism has been exterminated, which is the same illogic as saying that sexism disappeared overnight in the countries ruled by women, no important and open public debate can arise.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
sitelink wikipedia. org/wiki/Incarce
sitelink wikipedia. org/wiki/United
sitelink wikipedia. org/wiki/Compari
sitelink wikipedia. org/wiki/Prison
This one is especially creepy and distinctive, because if one clicks incarceration rate per,population“ there is the US followed by states that are no great places to live, there are close to no other Western democracies in the top list, giving massive implications of something going terribly wrong here.
sitelink wikipedia. org/wiki/Listof
sitelink wikipedia. org/wiki/Retribu
sitelink wikipedia. org/wiki/Restora
Just look at the categories down at the end of thearticles, once its related to sustainable, intelligent retributive solutions and on the dark side to retributive tribalism founded by wacky humanities.
The Big History picture of this, that is close to unexplored, is immense,. This was such a great read for so many reasons, . . on its face, this is an excellently argued work of historical nonfiction, Even apart from the profundity amp implications of the subject matter itself, this book is well researched, well structured, and well written to an extent that makes it a pleasure to read in a way that puts it in the upper echelon of its genre.
Beyond the book as a book, I was also struck by how much there was to learn from this book apart from its main thesis, Because this topic has been an area of interest for some time, I was well aware of its overall argument amp contribution to the study of race in America.
But there was SO much here beyond that main thesis amp I really enjoyed experiencing the way Alexander wove historical details to make her argument, I also absolutely LOVED the last chapter, . . ten years later, her diagnosis of where progress for the Black community had stalled amp prognostication of where it should move is quite prophetic,
All in all, if you think that you already know what this book is like due to its influence on subsequent books you don't, This totally stands up as a work unto itself and is a fascinating classic of historical nonfiction, A little bit of honesty here:
This is an extremely important book that too few people will read,
"Why"
Because it tackles the systemic institutional racism issue and breaks down all the many aspects that turn it into a fullblown machine.
"Wait. Huh Why wouldn't people want to have that"
Because it's understandably complicated and people are afraid of complicated,
"Oh. Right. "
But this does not mean it shouldn't be read, Indeed, I think everyone should read it and understand it,
I've personally been reading about things like this for ages, Bits and pieces. Never the whole picture. And this one ISN'T the whole picture because no shortish book can tackle it all, But this one DOES tackle a rather large portion of it,
I won't be able to mention them all here, but I'll do some:
Alexander brings up the historical aspect in brief and specifically how, during the race riotsyears ago the whole idea of even mentioning race became a taboo subject.
I think this is very important, If racism is at all to have a future, it must be couched in innocuous terms, and deniable policies or the "obviousness" of it would get all kinds of human rights violations thrown at them.
The whole point was to create a new system where they could create a permanent underclass while avoiding racial terms while ALSO making it mostly about race.
Solution Make a drug war, Ignore the fact that drugrelated offenses were going down, Find something everyone can unilaterally agree upon during the 's, hype it up WAY out of proportion to the actual problem, and turn it into a class/race specific issue without directly calling it a race thing.
The author backs up everything with all kinds of proof, easily verified with/hindsight, but the vast majority of drug users were white, Crack cocaine was only as addictive as regular cocaine, Alcohol abuse is MUCH worse than cocaine, crack, or especially marijuana, but since crack was actually unloaded upon black communities SPECIFICALLY, shortly after America's involvement in the drug cartels in the 's, it was fair game to focus almost ALL attention on crack, and specifically, the horrendously pervasive narratives about its danger.
Anyone alive during the time will remember a deluge of ads, focus groups, MILITARY HARDWARE being gifted to police departments everywhere, and new laws that specifically allowed the seizure of property, homes, and vehicles on only SUSPECTED drug use.
Think about it, If someone calls a tip line saying you're up to no good, and you're black, this is all they need to blast down your door, freeze your bank accounts and take all your property.
This is not PROOF of wrongdoing, And guess who gets the property The cops are allowed to keep it all to fund the war on drugs directly,
Add to this that racial profiling is VERY much a proven thing and that it is pervasive, with sometimes more thantimes as many blacks getting subjected to this and most of them too poor to buy off the racket, it means widespread poverty with no recourse.
And then we get to the good stuff, The prison system. Since the 's, the prison system grew to an unimaginable size with MOST of the people in jail being black men, Why Because most of them are there because of draconian laws on drug possession, Even though alcohol is objectively worse across the board, it is relatively light and is almost always focused on treating the problem, In other countries, sentences are described in terms of months, not a minimum ofyears for possession, And yet, the whole IDEA of being TOUGH ON CRIME seems too GOOD to be TRUE, right Well, yeah, It IS too good to be true,
The collateral damage is pervasive, Already poor people who have suffered "soft" segregation and housing issues are villainized further with all the same arguments made by plantation owners against their slaves, The forwardlooking politicians of either side embraced these narratives equally, On the surface, it FEELS right, And that's the point. Let's not look at the conditions that keep an entire people in fear of losing everything, let's blame the ones who already have practically nothing for being angry that they have practically nothing.
And then wonder why they're upset,
Oh! Let's send in more cops to clean up the streets! Meanwhile more folk lose their houses whether or not they're actually guilty of anything.
Take the case of the grandparents who lose their house because a grandchild was caught smoking crack two blocks away, Multiply truly egregious cases like that by thousands, and you might get a better idea,
And then we come to one of the worst aspects of all this, Postincarceration.
We all know that felons are massively discriminated against, It's almost like it's a law, Denied jobs, denied schooling, denied housing, denied hope, It's a perpetual system of punishment going on far, far longer than a prison sentence, Basically, the feeling goes, if you do the time, it'll be permanent, Permanent underclass.
So let's look at the judicial system a bit, Most cop dramas are pure narrative, And what I mean by that is that they are NOT accurately portraying the system we have, If a poor person gets a lawyer and predominately, those arrested are black they are generally always pressured to plea bargain, This means that whether they actually INNOCENT or not, they're pressured to do the time because the free lawyers are extremely overworked and don't have the time to do anything else with an overburdened system designed to target blacks.
Again, the author does her homework and because there are so many obvious cases like this, it's become something of a dark joke,
What isn't clear to most people put into this position is this: once you're branded a felon, you stay one for the rest of your living life.
Most get their driver's licenses revoked, Their right to vote is revoked, Many of these aspects are done in such a way as to be a "soft" prevention, such as needing to pay, in perpetuity, legal fees, probation fees, even whoppingfines to just be allowed the right to vote again.
Whenof your paycheck can be garnished to pay for the legal costs and many, many incidentals after your getting out of prison, you are permanently locked into a nowin situation with no way out.
Now, combine this with tough on crime laws that target blacks WAY more than anyone else, who pull you over for minor traffic violations and then rifle through your vehicles, maybe finding a dime bag of marijuana, getting arrested, put through the pleabargain machine, do several years, and then been way below the fact of poverty and be turned away ANYWHERE you go afterward.
. . because you smoked marijuana while being black,
All of this is compounded as a huge social issue happening to millions and millions of people all the time, At one point, the prisons werefilled on drug possession charges, And afterward, after the meatgrinder of the justice system is done with you, all your prospects for a decent life dry up,
No, of course not, we don't call this racism now, It's NOT about race. It's about being tough on crime, In a perpetual punitive system that just HAPPENS to focus on mostly black people,
The whites who tend to USE the drugs more is just a weird fact, For all those whites that go to jail under the same rules, it's considered collateral damage, But since the ones that are hurt the most are the ones who are already poor, too, it doesn't really matter, Right Because, if they could have afforded a good lawyer in the first place, they would have FOUGHT this travesty from the first arrest,
Note that rich drug kingpins and rich people, in general, tend to get out of the penal system, The war on crime doesn't care about getting the drugs off the street, They're too busy making sure that informants keep the seizure machine well oiled, fully funded, and that means making sure that the targets of these attacks are never organized, always politically infighting, and physically hurting themselves.
It's also classic psychological warfare,
So yes, I don't go into everything that's in this book, but the primary points are here in this review,
I absolutely recommend reading the actual book for a much more detailed analysis, It's not really enough just to know about individual aspects of these problems,
We must see the whole forest, too, and not just the trees,
I especially recommend this book if you want to know the fundamental reason why "Defund the Police" is trending, Bazookas REALLY IS THIS WHAT WE REALLY NEED,