Charles Dickens' observation at an 1849 execution remains relevant today: “[V]agabonds . . . flocked onto the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behavior.” The history of capital punishment mirrors what Dickens observed: a search for the ultimate oxymoron – a killing the community could be proud of, painless to both the offender and spectators. But American history belies those adjectives. Reinforcing communal values has little to do with today's execution protocol. Once informing the general public, capital punishment has become invisible. The average citizen rarely knows what is being done when the government executes a criminal. If public hangings once made execution a community act, the procedures surrounding lethal injection today lessen pain, audience, and message. Now it is the government, not …show more content…
Ironically, now that lethal injection is the preferred method of killing, several courts have held the electric chair unconstitutional (“Electric Chair Banned as Cruel, Unusual Punishment”).The ultimate irony, however, is the fact that those most needing a deterrent miss the chance to receive that message, thanks to darkness, private places, and controlled admission. 2. For centuries, ethnocentric beliefs have shaped social relations across lines of what are now understood as class, race, gender, and sexuality. Today, when it is politically incorrect to hold bigoted views about “others” (e.g., racial minorities, women, gays), it is still acceptable to hold such views about “criminals.” So when public discourse dwells on offenders, what usually comes to mind are racially charged subtexts. For instance, while poor and black women became targets of the criminal justice system, middle- and upper-class women escaped scrutiny (). In other words, “crime” is more than the violation of a legalized social norm, and “justice” is more than the equal application of laws.
He claims the prejudices of the judicial system handed out mandatory sentencing for those who used their constitutional right to have a trial by jury. The author builds a relationship with the audience by using Pathos in order to compel them to recognize the urgency to change the current law. Girault explains the failing logic of the law on page 225, he states that communities were to be made safer and instead of targeting petty crimes the focus would be to bring down kingpins, however after three decades of the SRA it still was a failure. Girault defines the sentencing reform act as discriminatory and states that minorities are hugely effected by this law and states ”Black people are overwhelming charged, convicted and sentenced at a higher rate to federal crimes since the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act.” (Girault 228).
Michelle alexander states in her book that “1 in every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men” (61). The idea of incarceration, in this situation, mass incarceration is
According to Richer C. Dieter, an Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, DC, executions in public gave an impactful message to the society. "Hangings were a public warning, intended to impress the local community with the consequences of crime" (798). I totally disagree with these statements as everyone's privacy should be protected and the warning towards the public only adds unnecessary fears. Every people in the states have the rights to have their privacy protected and need to gain the individual's explicit consent before releasing information about the criminals. Most importantly we need to
The Jail and The New Jim Crow both describe how our justice system is generally based on people’s conceptions of things, and how our own justice system is creating a new way of discriminating people by labeling, incarcerating the same disreputables and lower class that have come to be labeled as the rabble class. In chapter two, of The New Jim Crow, supporting the claim that our justice system has created a new way of segregating people; Michelle Alexander describes how the process of mass incarceration actually works and how at the end the people that we usually find being arrested, sent to jail, and later on sent to prison, are the same low class persons’ with no knowledge and resources. These people commit petty crimes that cost them their
In her article “The New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander powerfully argues that the American prison system has become a redesigned form of disenfranchisement of poor people of color and compares it to the racially motivated Jim Crow laws. She supports her assertions through her experiences as a civil rights lawyer, statistical facts about mass incarceration, and by comparing the continued existence of racial discrimination in America today to the segregation and discrimination during the Jim Crow laws. Alexander’s purpose is to reveal the similarities of the discriminatory and segregating Jim Crow laws to the massive influx of incarceration of poor people of color in order to expose that racism evolves to exist in disguised, yet acceptable forms
However, a number of African Americans, who were convicted of a felony, are disproportionately high nowadays. Michelle Alexander considers that It has led to the creation of “a new racial undercaste” (2010). Actually, in our time, discrimination affects every aspect of political, economic, and social life of the people who was charged with a serious criminal offence. In this regard, she mentions the law “banning drug felons from public housing …and denying them basic public benefits for life” (2010). We live in a “colorblind society” that pretends the racial disparity and discrimination do not exist.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a New York Times bestseller that expounds detailed accounts as to how mass incarceration is not simply a criminal justice issue, but a civil rights crisis. The author, Michelle Alexander argues that the New Jim Crow is the creation of a new racial caste system, with the intent to strip away the rights of Black Americans. This system, created by the defenders of the old system, uses unjust drug charges as a mechanism leading to increased incarceration rates and modern day segregation. In The New Jim Crow, Alexander addresses the way in which this modern system of industrialized racism ties back to the history of “racialized social control in the United States” (p. 16).
Alexander then argues that mass incarceration is the new norm precisely resembles the racist system: Jim Crow because black males in the current society are equally as trapped as black individuals during the Jim Crow era. Black males are therefore trapped in the mass incarceration system, “competing on an unequal level towards success,” in order to keep white males on the top of our society. Alexander creates connections between the two caste systems and describing it as a “symbolic production of race,” the most important parallel. She argues that the production of race was created to stereotype black men as criminals and makes society believe so by generating propaganda, giving the government an excuse to criminalize black men more than white men, although they’re more likely to professionally sell drugs and not get criminalized for it, and making society support mass incarceration (p.
This essay will examine three types of disparities that happen under the United States sentencing today. Judges tend to look at the characteristics of the victim involved in the crime to determine the outcome of the sentence. Why should someone’s race, gender, or even religion effect the time they receive for their jail sentence? The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) was created to eliminate disparities, basically explaining how one’s ethnicity, gender, and religion should not affect their sentencing. Even with this act existing, race and gender has still plays a huge part on unnecessary sentencing lengths.
We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way
As demonstrated in Trends in U.S. corrections, the U.S. has had the highest rates of incarceration as of 2011 adding up to more than seventy hundred thousand(The Sentencing Project 3). Race and class play an important role on who is punished for such crimes as well as who gets
At the start of the 1970s, incarceration appeared to be “a practice in decline.” One of the largest problems facing the world today is the mass incarceration of African Americans, where many arrest African Americans as they claim they appear more threatening. The government has done us wrong; it can avoid these consequences without the imprisonment of these innocent people for such diminutive crimes. These harsh conditions affect many more than just the families, communities, and individuals, but also the economy as confinement has tremendous costs on society. The sad but true reality proves that any White person can do things far more extreme than a “black person.”
In Michelle Alexander’s book, she argues that mass incarceration is a huge form of racialized social control. While most agree with her that many more black men are put in prison than white men, some also agree that discrimination can arise in public situations, not just in prison. Based on my own experience in public school and in my community, I have seen just how other people of color are discriminated in society too. Alexander concentrates her main points on the racism and discrimination of blacks more than any
It highlights the system's persistent racial biases and systemic inadequacies, suggesting that racial superiority was maintained by discriminatory laws and practices even after slavery was legally abolished. Mass incarceration is shown in the movie as a modern form of racialized social control that promotes poverty, disenfranchisement, and institutional racism. Through interviews, it analyzes the catastrophic impact on individuals and communities, challenging viewers to critically evaluate the relationship between race, politics, and criminal justice, and arguing for serious reform and a reevaluation of cultural
Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.