Vicious Cycles
A Broken Justice System Perpetuates Itself…
by Robert C. Koehler
“Wheel about and turn about and do just so. Every time I turn about I jump Jim Crow.†— chorus of an 1828 minstrel song
“We have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it.†— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Yeah, it’s called mass incarceration. Our jails are filled with black and brown men and women. The number of inmates, primarily people of color, has soared sevenfold in the last three decades, according to Alexander, from 300,000 to more than 2 million, the largest number, by far, in the developed world. Many millions more are on probation or parole. And no matter what their crime, the inmates never get their citizenship back. The stigma of being an ex-felon brands someone for life as a second-class human being. (more…)