Where Do We Go From Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights
"On the surface, crime and punishment appear to be unsophisticated
matters. After all, if someone takes part in a crime, then shouldn’t he
or she have to suffer the consequences? But dig deeper and it is clear
that crime and punishment are multidimensional problems that stem from
racial prejudice justified by age-old perceptions and beliefs about
African Americans. The United States has a dual criminal justice system
that has helped to maintain the economic and social hierarchy in
America, based on the subjugation of blacks, within the United States.
Public policy, criminal justice actors, society and the media, and
criminal behavior have all played roles in creating what sociologist
Loic Wacquant calls the hyperincarceration of black men. But there are
solutions to rectify this problem.
To summarize the major arguments in this essay, the root cause of the
hyperincarceration of blacks (and in particular black men) is society’s
collective choice to become more punitive. These tough-on-crime laws,
which applied to all Americans, could be maintained only because of the
dual legal system developed from the legacy of racism in the United
States. That is, race allowed for society to avoid the trade-off between
societies 'demand' to get tough on crime and its 'demand' to retain
civil liberties, through unequal enforcement of the law. In essence,
tying crime to observable characteristics (such as race or religious
affiliation) allowed the majority in society to pass tough-on-crime
policies without having to bear the full burden of these policies,
permitting these laws to be sustained over time."
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