The following is a transcript from a radio interview of author Michelle Alexander:
Michelle Alexander: You know, within a relatively short period of time, we went from a prison population of 300,000 to now, nearly 2,500,000 in the space of just a few decades. Our prison population quintupled. Not doubled or tripled – quintupled!
This exponential increase in the size of our prison system was not due to crime rates, as is so often believed and is told to us frequently by politicians and media pundits. Rather than crime rates, the explosion of our prison population has been due, largely to the Drug War.
A war that has been waged largely in poor communities of color, even though studies have now shown, for decades, that people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than Whites. People of all races and ethnicities use and sell legal and illegal drugs in the United States.
It has been primarily and overwhelmingly poor people of color in the United States who have been stopped, searched, arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses. Once you’re branded a drug felon, you’re relegated to a permanent second-class status.
Once labeled a felon, you may be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits.
So many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the “Jim Crow” era are suddenly legal again. Once you’ve been branded a felon and it’s the Drug War primarily, that is responsible for the return of millions of African Americans to a permanent second-class status, analogous in many ways to “Jim Crow.”
I devote a whole chapter in the book to the shredding of the Fourth Amendment in the Drug War. Once upon a time, it used to be the case that law enforcement officials had to have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and a reasonable belief that someone was actually dangerous before they could stop them or frisk them on the street, on the sidewalk or stop and search their car.
Today, thanks to a series of decisions by the US Supreme Court, as long as police can “get” consent from an individual, they can stop and search them for any reason or no reason at all. Giving the police license to fan out into neighborhoods and stop and search just about anyone, anywhere.
Consent is a very easy thing to obtain. If a law enforcement officer approaches you with his hand on his gun and says, “May I search your bag? Will you put your hands up in the air and turn around so I may search you?” and you comply, that’s interpreted as consent.
But of course, it’s precisely that kind of discriminatory and arbitrary police action that led the framers of the Constitution to adopt the Fourth Amendment prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures.
Today, law enforcement feels free to stop and search just about anyone, anywhere they please and they know very well that almost no one will refuse consent to a search especially in a poor communities of color where people have been trained and disciplined that resisting police authority can lead to violence.
Dean Becker: We are speaking with Michelle Alexander she’s author of a great new book that I highly recommend, The New Jim Crow – Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Michelle, it’s a wonderful book and I want to read a portion of a page here:
“With no means to pay off their debts back in the ‘Jim Crow’ days, prisoners were sold as forced labor to lumber camps to brick yards, railroads, etc. Death rates were shockingly high, for the contractors had no interest in the health or wellbeing of their laborers”.
We have a very similar situation that has developed in America now where people work for pennies on the dollar. Thus earning great profits for prison guards unions and others that are in effect “contractors” here. Your thoughts on that, please?
Michelle Alexander: Well, yes, you know, a number of things. First, many people have no conception of how extraordinarily difficult it is for people once they are released for prison to “reintegrate” into mainstream society.
Not only may they be denied the right to vote and not only are they ineligible for jury service for the rest of their lives and if they’ve been branded a felon but employment discrimination is perfectly legal against them.
Every time they’ve got that employment application, you got to check that box, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” It doesn’t matter if that felony happened last week or thirty-five years ago, for the rest of your life you have to check that box. Knowing full well that the odds are that application is going in the trash once that box has been checked.
Housing discrimination is perfectly legal against those branded felons. Public housing is off limits to people released from prison for a minimum of five years and regulations encourage public housing agencies to discriminate against formerly incarcerated people for the rest of their lives.
Even food stamps are off limits to people who have been convicted of drug felonies. People with HIV/AIDS and pregnant woman, aren’t even entitled to food stamps for the rest of their lives, no matter how sick or hungry they may be.
The kicker here is that people released from prison are often saddled with thousands, hundreds or thousands of dollars in fees, fines, court costs and accumulated back child support. You know, in some states, a growing number of states you’re expected to pay back the cost of your imprisonment, once you’re released.
Up to 100% of your wages can be garnished to pay back all of these fees, fines and accumulated back child support. You know back during the days of convict leasing, there was a system where African Americans were arrested for minor offenses, like loitering. They were arrested, imprisoned and then leased back to plantations where they were forced to work for little or no pay.
Well, you know today, we have a similar system where African Americans are arrested for extremely minor nonviolent, drug related offenses. Arrested en masse and sent to prison where they are often forced to work for little or no pay for either private companies or their imprisonment itself.
It enriches prison guard unions and private prison companies and then once they’re released. If they’re lucky enough to get a job 100% of their wages can be garnished, resulting in what? Them unable to survive, to make it a legal economy and they are returned to right back to prison.
In fact about 70% of people released from prison return within three years and a majority of those who return, do so in a matter of months because the challenges associated with mere survival after being branded a felon are so immense.
Dean Becker: Michelle, you know it used to be America was the Land of Second Chances that a person could always start again, perhaps, prosper, but you’re right.
It has been stacked very definitely against the potential of making that second chance, especially for those convicted of drug crimes, that as you say, have to jump through so many hoops, pay so many fees and yet they just can’t seem to prosper. That black market is always out there, enticing people to come back to work for them, is it not?
Michelle Alexander: Yes, absolutely, you know, well that’s the thing. Many people say, “Well, people who commit drug offenses, particularly those who sell drugs, well they’re making a choice to violate the law and so they deserve whatever they get.”
Well, first of all, most of us, most people in the United States, you know I’d venture to say mostly all, have violated the law at some point in their lives. Most of us have broken the law, either by experimenting with illegal drugs, using illegal drugs at some point in our lives or have violated a law by speeding on the freeway, which certainly possess more risk to human life and potential harm than smoking marijuana in the privacy of one’s home.
All of us have broken the law, all of us have made mistakes but it’s poor folks of color primarily, who are asked to basically forfeit their lives for the youthful mistakes or indiscretions, mistakes of judgment that they make relatively minor, non-violent drug offences.
It’s youth of color in these inner city schools that have their school swept for drugs and have drug sniffing dogs brought to sniff all their schools’ lockers. They are stopped and frisked while waiting for the school buses.
This Drug War has resulted in the branding of young people, before they even have the opportunity to reach a voting age, as criminals and felons for engaging in precisely the same kind of illegal drug activity that is largely ignored on college campuses, universities and middle class white communities.
So, back during the “Jim Crow” era, you know, literacy tests and poll taxes were facially race neutral. Poll taxes and literacy tests operated to keep African Americans away from the polls. On their face, they appeared race neutral. They said nothing about race, but the laws were forced in such a racially discriminatory manner that they operated to create a caste system.
Well, the same is much true with drug laws in the United States today. On their face, they appear race neutral but the way they’re enforced is so grossly discriminatory. In fact, in some states, African Americans have constituted 80-90% of all drug offenders sent to prison. Even though we know that people of color aren’t any more likely to violate our nation’s drug laws.
