The New Jim Crow

“There are more African Americans under correctional control today in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.”

”As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race. ”

”A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.”

”If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African

American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life.”

These are quotes from “The New Jim Crow”, a recent article by Michele Alexander of The Huffington Post. And as outrageous as these facts are, they do not touch upon the full impact of racism in the American criminal justice system.

Most states, including New Jersey, have bail “guidelines” - a euphemism for the refusal of judges (or agencies which exert control over those judges) to individually assess one charged with an offense to determine if he or she will return to face the new charges.

Bail, traditionally and constitutionally, exists to insure that one who is not guilty and indeed presumed innocent will return for trial. It was never to be one-size fits all proposition that punishes rather than respects the presumption of innocence. Indeed, in the New Jersey Constitution, bail is mentioned as a right more than almost any other.

But bail “guidelines” punish mostly the poor and people of color before trial. Five thousand dollars means little to an upper middle class defendant yet represents the difference between pre-trial freedom and incarceration to one who is impoverished. Conversely, five thousand dollars, in a one-size fits all system, bears little relation to a well-off person’s motivation to return.

Stuck in jail, with the attendant loss of a home and job– not to mention the conditions like no medical care-- even totally innocent people will plead out to get out or end the limbo. Of course this, as noted, applies mostly to people of color. Once convicted by way of this institutionally coerced plea bargain, an innocent person is converted to a felon. Jim Crow then comes full circle as felons can’t vote.

So it is little wonder that in addition to its racially skewed prison population, New Jersey county jails are generally overcrowded hellholes teeming with people of color with little means. Forget the presumption of innocence. If you are poor, your punishment starts with the simple but often mistaken word of the policeman.

Even those lucky enough to obtain bail must face a gauntlet of institutionalized racial barriers that ensure radically more people of color end up in prison. Even in supposedly “progressive” states like New Jersey, the imbalance is nothing short of shameful.

Laws requiring mandatory minimums are more likely used against minorities. For example, mandatory sentences for drug sales or possession near schools impacts minorities in the inner city simply because there are tighter quarters and almost no areas are beyond the school zone boundary - not so for the less crowded and more affluent suburbs.

And the list goes on.

Suffice it to say that The Huffington Post notes the outrageous symptoms of our criminal justice system. But our criminal justice system and how it continues to criminalize color must be decoded more aggressively for real change to occur.