Mass Incarceration: The New Jim Crow
What Is Mass Incarceration?
The United States is home to 5% of the world’s population — but holds nearly 25% of the world’s incarcerated people. That’s mass incarceration. That’s not a coincidence. It’s the result of decades of laws and policies that systematically target Black and brown communities.
This phenomenon is known as mass incarceration — and it didn’t happen by accident.
According to the ACLU, the number of people locked up in America skyrocketed after the 1970s. And as prison populations grew, one pattern became impossible to ignore:
Black Americans are far more likely to be arrested, sentenced, and locked away — often for longer periods and for lesser crimes — than white Americans.
How Did We Get Here?
Mass incarceration is not just a crime issue. It’s a racial justice issue, and a direct extension of earlier systems of oppression.
- After slavery ended, the Black Codes criminalized harmless acts like loitering or not having a job.
- Then came Jim Crow laws, which made segregation and racial control legal.
- Later, during the 1980s and 90s, the War on Drugs and policies like the Rockefeller Drug Laws introduced mandatory minimums and three-strikes laws that targeted Black communities.
Together, these built a system where policing and punishment were not about public safety — they were about preserving white dominance.
Sentencing disparity, broken windows policing, and racial profiling all fed into the same machine.
Why Is It Called “The New Jim Crow”?
Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking book The New Jim Crow helped shine a light on how the U.S. criminal justice system replaced old systems of control with new ones.
Where Jim Crow laws once legally denied Black Americans the right to vote, work, or go to school with whites, mass incarceration:
- Strips voting rights from millions of felons (disproportionately Black)
- Makes it harder to get housing or employment after release
- Breaks up families and destabilizes communities
And once you’re labeled a felon, that stigma follows you forever — even after you’ve served your time.
This isn’t rehabilitation. It’s a life sentence of exclusion.
It’s Not About Crime — It’s About Control
Numerous studies have shown that Black and white people use and sell drugs at similar rates, yet Black people are almost 4 times more likely to be arrested for drug offenses.
It’s not about what you do — it’s about who you are and where you live.
And just like the One Drop Rule, which legally defined anyone with Black ancestry as Black, today’s justice system sees Blackness itself as a threat — something to be watched, judged, punished.
Mass Incarceration by the Numbers
- Over 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the U.S.
- 1 in 3 Black men born today can expect to go to prison in their lifetime
- Black youth are five times more likely than white youth to be locked up
- In some states, Black women are imprisoned at twice the rate of white women
These numbers aren’t “by chance.” They’re by design.
Wikipedia
The New Jim Crow
Race in the United States criminal justice system
Incarceration in the United States : Ethnicity
Video
Mass Incarceration: The Crime of Being Black in America (Frank & Marshall College)
Mass Incarceration, Visualized (The Atlantic)
The Enduring Myth of Black Criminality (The Atlantic)
The human stories behind mass incarceration (TEDWomen – Eve Abrams)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration and Institutional Racism (Unitarian Universalist Association)
Further Reading
Minnesota exposes one troubling reason America locks up so many black people (Business Insider)
Mass Incarceration (ACLU)
Mass Incarceration: An Animated Series (ACLU)
Slavery to Mass Incarceration (Equal Justice Initiative)
The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration (The Atlantic)
Mass incarceration of African Americans affects the racial achievement gap — report (Washington Post)
The Social and Moral Cost of Mass Incarceration in African American Communities (University of Pennsylvania Law School)
We Were Never the Problem
For centuries, systems were built to keep Black Americans from having freedom, opportunity, or power — from slavery and segregation, to anti-miscegenation laws, to the cages of the modern prison system.
🖤 “We Were Never The Problem” is a direct challenge to that legacy.
It’s a refusal to carry the weight of lies written into law.
Mass incarceration is not about justice. It’s about justifying injustice — again.