Mass incarceration: the new Jim Crow?
During the late twentieth century, the United States experienced a dramatic rise in arrests and a sharp increase in the size of the prison population, a phenomenon termed mass incarceration by both academics and the media. Mass incarceration took shape through racialised policing and the detention and construction of the criminal in America, particularly relating to drug offences. This marked the continuation of the previous racial caste systems such as slavery, colonialism, and Jim Crow laws in the so-called age of colourblindness, that supposedly began following the implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected African Americans’ right to vote. These acts effectively ended legal segregation and disenfranchisement. Mass incarceration cuts through this colour blindness. Without explicitly dividing the population by race, mass incarceration divides the population into criminal and non-criminal in a manner through which the criminal becomes a heavily racialised term in practice. For this reason, mass incarceration has been termed by historians such as Michelle Alexander as the “the New Jim Crow” (Alexander, 2010). The Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities, such as educational, medical and social spaces in the South, beginning in the 1870s. Mass incarceration reproduced and replaced the economic, social and political marginalisation of the Jim Crow laws and slavery that came before, and allowed segregation and discrimination to take place even after they were made illegal.
In 1971, President Nixon coined the term ‘War on Drugs’ when he declared that drugs were public enemy number one. Nixon rolled out the campaign which focused on strict law enforcement, high arrest rates for drug use, youth education and treatment programmes. The expansion of the campaign, however, must be credited to the Reagan administration following his proclamation in 1982 in response to crack cocaine. Under Reagan, mandatory minimum sentencing drastically increased incarceration for non-violent drug offences, prioritising punishment over support for users. These sentences were established as part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 which also allocated billions of dollars to drug enforcement.
The War on Drugs disproportionately targeted the African-American community and led to the systematic destruction of entire neighbourhoods and arrests of an unprecedented amount of Black men. Reagan proudly boasted that “today, more arrests are being made and more narcotics are being seized than ever before” (Reagan, 1986) in the US. In her work, Alexander claims that the Reagan administration “announced the current drug war before crack became an issue in the media or a crisis in poor black neighborhoods” (Alexander, 2010) as a deliberate tactic to target such communities rather than actual concerns over wellbeing. Supporting this was the CIA’s own admission that “guerrilla armies it actively supported in Nicaragua were smuggling illegal drugs into the United States” - drugs which hit the streets of “inner-city Black neighborhoods” (Alexander, 2010). Due to this influx of drugs in Black communities, the police force were legitimised in targeting such areas for their substantial involvement in illegal drug use and trade. As a result of this racialised rhetoric and policy, “African-Americans and Latinos represented three-fourths of all drug offenders in state prisons”, (Lassiter, 2015) despite usage rates between races being similar, indicating that minority communities were more frequently punished for their involvement with drugs.
Nixon’s initial War on Drugs campaign, upon which Reagan’s operation stemmed from, was also racially motivated from its creation. In an interview, Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, explicitly stated that “we knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be black, but by getting the public to associate Blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities” (CNN, 2016). For the Reagan administration, disrupting Black communities through the War on Drugs was politically motivated, allowing for the disenfranchisement of a group who were likely not to vote in favour of the Republican Party, as well as perpetuating the image of a government dealing with drug crime.
The influence of the media was crucial in allowing for mass incarceration to take shape. It presented drug use as a crisis rooted in minority communities and legitimised aggressive policing within those spaces. “Starting in 1985, media reports focused obsessively on the idea of ‘crack babies,’” (Gershon, 2018) – children with substance addictions from birth and with disabilities supposedly due to their mother’s use of drugs during pregnancy. This was a media invention rather than a medical term. These stories perpetuated an image of careless Black mothers who endangered their children through their drug use. This was reinforced by the media with the image of Black mothers as ‘welfare queens’ who abused state systems and did not fit the traditional nuclear family model. Such media stories generated negative and unsympathetic public opinions, which allowed for the police force to enact increasingly aggressive policies upon minority communities for drug use. By depicting Black women and their children as emblematic of social disorder, the media helped justify the expansion of harsh policing and surveillance in minority neighbourhoods.
Whilst some media coverage only hinted towards the racial basis of the War on Drugs, others explicitly blamed Black communities for drug peddling. The “Time magazine reproduced the trope that ‘once confined to black urban ghettos,’ drug abuse ‘has come to invade the heartland of white, middle-class America.’” (Lassiter, 2015) Through such representation, white Americans are persuaded to be fearful of Black communities who threaten their traditional, suburban ways of life. The divide between ‘ghettos’ and the white ‘heartlands’ and the presentation of an invasion sustains the ideology of physical segregation. (Lassiter, 2015) The metaphor of invasion therefore spread fear of Black communities among white audiences, which legitimised support for the implementation of mass incarceration which segregated Black Americans and induced moral panic.
Whilst some media outlets presented drug use as a socio-economic issue, they never achieved the cultural dominance of the racialised narratives. Sensational stories of racial threat, supported by systemic oppression, proved far more powerful in shaping public opinion, meaning the media overall amplified racial divisions rather than highlighting structural issues that trapped people in lives of poverty. The media fascination with the idea of the Black criminal led to white support for aggressive policing, harsh sentencing and the resulting mass incarceration that has been termed the new Jim Crow.
Supported by media narratives, Black neighbourhoods were deliberately targeted pertaining to the War on Drugs narrative which renewed the idea of the criminal as a Black man from previous racial caste systems of slavery and legal disenfranchisement. The disproportionate effect of the drug war on Black communities has been attested to by a member of the Baltimore police force who in an interview, admitted that “we tend to target communities of color without even needing reasonable suspicion; it's legal to just do it.” (Martin, 2013) The targeting of such communities led to increased violence in policing methods, with new weapons being trialled within Black neighbourhoods such as battering rams to raid suspect houses and military-grade firearms. Some community figures in Los Angeles, such as the Reverend Jeffrey Joseph, argued that “we don’t need new weapons tried out on us” (Murch, 2015) indicating that Black communities were merely test subjects for state violence.
However, this moment also reveals a complexity that complicates the idea of the War on Drugs as simply the new Jim Crow. The issue divided the Black community: some desperate to be rid of drug abuses were eager to welcome new methods. On the other hand, some were frustrated with being test subjects for new violent policies and saw this as an extension of historical state violence; a modern iteration of racial caste systems that punished Black communities. Policies such as these forced Black communities to make impossible decisions: either endure violent policing, or risk appearing to consent to drug abuse. Not only did the War on Drugs disenfranchise Black Americans once more, it also physically and psychologically destabilised communities, causing fractures and internal conflict within them. Such disproportionate policing indicated the manner in which the War on Drugs was able to become the new Jim Crow, punishing and destroying Black communities physically and psychologically through its violent and unequal methods.
Mass incarceration therefore allowed for physical segregation to continue through the placing of a vast amount of the Black population in prisons. Under slavery, Black communities were physically segregated through their containment, whilst under Jim Crow laws, segregation continued with separate bathrooms, schools, seating areas and more. Mass incarceration similarly physically segregated Black people through placing them behind bars where they were separated from the outside world. It therefore operated as a more focused and contained form of segregation, as imprisoned men and women were confined to prisons which were built in rural areas so that, even whilst on courtyard time, prisoners were in a secluded area, separated from the rest of society. This segregation mostly impacts the Black community since statistics show that “the United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.” (Alexander, 2010) This percentage is largely impacted by the nature of drug laws and the use of mandatory minimum sentences which were implemented through the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986 during the height of the War on Drugs: for possession of five grams of crack cocaine, an individual was given a five year minimum sentence. This contrasted that for the same sentence, an individual would have to carry five hundred grams of powder cocaine, suggesting that the harsh sentences for crack targeted Black communities, which the drug was more associated with. These sentencing laws were in place until 2010, when President Barack Obama addressed them as a “primary driver of this mass incarceration phenomenon” and argued that “we have to reconsider whether 20 to 30 year life sentences for non-violent crimes is the best way for us to solve these problems.” (Obama, 2015)
However, with a lack of opportunities once released, individuals often found themselves back in the crime cycle. Felons can be economically segregated from the rest of society due to denial of employment, public housing, welfare, food banks, and rental opportunities. This denial of assistance forces Black men and women back into the criminal sphere in order to survive the “parallel universe – much like Jim Crow” (Alexander, 2010) which they enter upon their release. The prison therefore “functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited” (Davis, 2003) from which, upon their release, convicts struggled to reintegrate from their “abstract” experience. The Black convict therefore is prevented from assimilating back into society through being unable to secure stable work or housing. Often confined to ghetto communities, economic divisions were matched by physical segregation, leading to particular areas characterised by their poverty and crime, dominated by Black victims of mass incarceration.
Despite the introduction of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, through the political disenfranchisement of the criminal, Black men and women were denied the ability to vote. Disenfranchisement varies by state; in some areas, a felon can restore their right to vote after completing a period of probation or parole; in some states, a convicted felon is permanently denied the right to participate within the legal system as both voters and members of a jury. “Some crimes were specifically defined as felonies with the goal of eliminating Blacks from the electorate.” (Alexander, 2010) This disenfranchisement, resulting from mass incarceration, reconstructed the restrictions of previous racial caste systems; under Jim Crow, enforcement of literacy tests and poll taxes prevented poorly educated and impoverished Black individuals from voting whilst slavery had previously restricted voting access too. This restriction is still felt in the contemporary period; in 2020, it was estimated that “5.1 million people could not vote” which amounts to “1 in 44 adults who are barred from voting.” (Maxouris, 2020) The inability to vote combined with the economic segregation of the Black community leads to the creation of an underclass, the most dissociated in society who are often associated with crime, violence, joblessness and substance abuse.
In conclusion, mass incarceration becomes the new Jim Crow through the manner in which it targets the Black community disproportionately. The War on Drugs campaign and the implementation of minimum mandatory sentences were key in allowing mass incarceration to take shape, supported by the negative media coverage and the targeting of Black communities, in the supposed era of colour blindness. Mass incarceration actively segregated and discriminated against the Black population socially, economically and politically in a legalised manner. Black people are treated as perpetual criminals, despite the outlawing of systems such as slavery and Jim Crow, mass incarceration continues the racial caste system that treats Black people as second-class citizens and associates them with crime and violence.
Bibliography
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Davis, Angela. Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Gershon, Livia. “Rereading the Story of the Crack Epidemic.” JSTOR Daily, January 10, 2018. https://daily.jstor.org/rereading-the-story-of-the-crack-epidemic/.
Lassiter, Matthew D. “Impossible Criminals: The Suburban Imperatives of America’s War on Drugs.” Journal of American History 102, no.1 (2015): 126-140.
Martin, Rachel, host. “‘We Had No Business’ In White Neighborhoods.” NPR, August 11, 2013. https://www.npr.org/2013/08/11/211025034/we-had-no-business-in-white-neighborhoods.
Maxouris, Christina. “More than 5 million people with felony convictions can’t vote in this year’s election, advocacy group finds.” CNN US, October 15, 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/15/us/felony-convictions-voting-sentencing-project-study/index.html.
Murch, Donna. “Crack in Los Angeles: Crisis, Militarization, and Black Response to the Late Twentieth-Century War on Drugs.” Journal of American History 102, no.1 (2015): 162-173.
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum. “Remarks on Signing the Just Say No To Drugs Week Proclamation,” August 31, 2026. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-signing-just-say-no-drugs-week-proclamation.