Mass Incarceration and the Racial Caste System
By: Devon Barr
Tags: Racial Equity, Prison, Achievement Gap, Mass Incarceration, Prison Reform

The racial caste system is one issue that delineates how problems from the past still affect communities in the present day, which was spoken about by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow. All of the other articles that I read regarding this issue came full circle back to the racial caste system- this certain type of stratification that keeps people of color in poverty and in an inferior position. Methods of societal control are put in place to blame the victim and keep people trapped in a system of inequity and disadvantage with an unequal playing field. It’s more convenient to assume black men commit these crimes purely by choice, but it’s more likely that their lives have been structured in a way that their fate was determined by this system before they were even born.

A pertinent example of this would be the war on drugs, which is an inefficient and unsuccessful federal campaign by President Nixon that was supposed to target and control the illicit drug trade in the United States, but instead targeted people of color who were and are living in poverty. What this system essentially accomplished was increasing the divide in race and class. It further oppressed an already oppressed group of people, with the particular target being men of color. Black, Latinx, and Native American men have some of the highest prison populations in a nation that holds 25% of the world’s overall prison population. In turn, poor men of color don’t have proper representation so they’re pressured to plead guilty, therefore removing any chance of them ever integrating into mainstream, middle class society after they are released. They will instead be denied employment, housing, equitable education for themselves and their children, and benefits. Because of this, they’ll likely face issues that will cause reentry, which is a vicious cycle that they may not be able to break because of lack of proper resources and acceptance back into society.

Those who are a part of the under-caste system in America are denied the basics rights and privileges of citizenship, and this is a system that America perpetuates. This is especially prevalent through the existence of private prisons. Large corporations privately own these prisons meaning that there are less regulations in place and instead more violence and neglect towards the incarcerated men and women. These institutions receive a governmental stipend per day per prisoner, so harsher and longer sentences are pushed for the capitalistic gain of these privatized institutions. Extreme sentencing laws in general are keeping people in prison for longer than ever which is ineffective because it destroys any chance of hope and rehabilitation, and causes hindrances to reentrance into society. Parole is simply an illusion which leads to discouragement for those who are incarcerated.

Then, all of these issues lead to the achievement gap in poor, non-white communities because they obstruct the equal learning abilities of children whose parent(s) are incarcerated. Implications in the classroom from issues with poverty or having a parent in prison lead to children developing mental health disorders like anxiety and PTSD, behavioral issues, and of course the continuance of intergenerational trauma from economic instability and possible homelessness.

This cycle is impossible to break with a system that perpetuates racial stratification. Those who have been incarcerated are essentially denied the rights to equal opportunity in America. This issue trickles down onto their children, then onto their children’s children because it’s a cycle that the government does not care about because of their ability to make profit off of one man’s struggle.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration?redirect=issues/mass-incarceration#current