“Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
What defenders of the system typically fail to acknowledge is that the reason violent offenders comprise a fairly large percentage of the… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Even beyond private prison companies, a whole range of prison profiteers must be reckoned with if mass incarceration is to be undone,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Most people seem to assume that this dramatic surge in imprisonment was due to a corresponding surge in crime, particularly violent crime. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The extraordinary increase in prison admissions due to parole and probation violations is due almost entirely to the War on Drugs. With… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Private landlords as well as public landlords are free to discriminate against people with criminal records for the rest of their lives.… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“As the rules of acceptable discourse changed, however, segregationists distanced themselves from an explicitly racist agenda. they developed instead the racially sanitized… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The greatest myth about mass incarceration is that it has been driven by crime and crime rates. It's just not true. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Vagrancy laws and other laws defining activities such as "mischief" and "insulting gestures" as crimes were enforced vigorously against blacks. The aggressive… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Prosecutors frequently overcharge, load up charges on individual defendants, knowing that three strikes laws and harsh mandatory minimum sentences will force people… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The war on drugs has been the engine of mass incarceration. Drug convictions alone constituted about two-thirds of the increase in the… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
People charged with drug offenses, though, are typically poor people of color. They are routinely charged with felonies and sent to prison. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The wave of punitiveness that washed over the United States with the rise of the drug war and the get tough movement… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
For reasons that have stunningly little to do with crime or crime rates, we, as a nation, have chosen to lock up… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The system functioned relatively automatically, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identities, and ideologies already seemed natural. Ninety percent of those… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
... as recently as the mid-1970s, the most well-respected criminologists were predicting that the prison system would soon fade away. Prison did… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
My experience and research has led me to the regrettable conclusion that our system of mass incarceration functions more like a caste… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
In many large urban areas, the majority of working age African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
In this country, we force millions of people - who are largely black and brown - into a permanent second-class status simply… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
I think most people have a general sense that when you're released from prison, life is hard, but, you know, if you… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Those who have been swept within the criminal justice system know that the way the system actually works bears little resemblance to… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Most criminologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have had relatively little to do with… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The critical point is that thousands of people are swept into the criminal justice system every year pursuant to the drug war… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
If you ask for good schools, you aren't likely to get them. If you ask for jobs or economic investment, you won't get that… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The uncomfortable reality we must face is that California, like the nation as a whole, has treated generations of African Americans and Latinos as… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the problem. The fact that the meaning of race… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Since the nations founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die but then… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Felon disenfranchisement laws have been more effective in eliminating black voters in the age of mass incarceration than they were under Jim Crow…These figures… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“That was King’s dream—a society that is capable of seeing each of us, as we are, with love. That is a goal worth fighting… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Activists take the risks, while advocates are professional tinkerers with the system. What's necessary is for those who are advocates to support those who… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Civil rights protests were frequently depicted as criminal rather than political in nature, and federal courts were accused of excessive “lenience” toward lawlessness, thereby… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
We cannot 'fix' the police without a revolution of values and radical change to the basic structure of our society. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The mass incarceration of poor people of color, particularly black men, has emerged as a new caste system, one specifically designed to address the… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“[T]he slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. —W.E.B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
