The New Jim Crow Read online

  103 Ryan Pintado-Vertner and Jeff Chang. “The War on Youth,” Colorlines 2, no. 4 (Winter 1999-2000), 36.

  104 Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001).

  Chapter 4: The Cruel Hand

  1 Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, held in Rochester, July 6-8, 1853 (Rochester: Printed at the office of Frederick Douglass’s Papers, 1853), 16.

  2 Approximately 30 percent of African American men are banned for life from jury service because they are felons. See Brian Kalt, “The Exclusion of Felons from Jury Service,” American University Law Review 53 (2003): 65.

  3 Jeremy Travis, But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2002), 73.

  4 Webb Hubbell, “The Mark of Cain,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 2001; Nora Demleitner, “Preventing Internal Exile: The Need for Restrictions on Collateral Sentencing and Consequences,” Stanford Law and Policy Review 11, no. 1 (1999): 153-63.

  5 Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, eds., Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment (New York: The New Press, 2002), 5, citing American Bar Association, Task Force on Collateral Sanctions, Introduction, Proposed Standards on Collateral Sanctions and Administrative Disqualification of Convicted Persons, draft, Jan. 18, 2002.

  6 Frederick Douglass, “What Negroes Want,” in The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, vol. 4, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: International, 1955), 159-60.

  7 Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 152.

  8 Human Rights Watch, No Second Chance: People with Criminal Records Denied Access to Housing (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2006), ix.

  9 President Bill Clinton, “Remarks by the President at One Strike Symposium,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Mar. 28, 1996, http://clinton6.nara.gov/1996/03/1996-03-28-president-remarks-at-one-strike-symposium.html.

  10 Memorandum from President Clinton to HUD Secretary on “One Strike and You’re Out” Guidelines, Mar. 28, 1996, http://clinton6.nara.gov/1996/03/1996-03-28-memo-on-one-strike-and-you’re-out-guidelines.html; and President Bill Clinton, “Remarks by the President at One Strike Symposium.”

  11 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, notice PIH 96-16 (HA), Apr. 29, 1996, and attached “one strike” guidelines, HUD, “‘One Strike and You’re Out’ Screening and Eviction Guidelines for Public Housing Authorities,” Apr. 12, 1996.

  12 Human Rights Watch, No Second Chance.

  13 Ibid., vi.

  14 Rucker v. Davis, 237 F.3d 1113 (9th Cir. 2001).

  15 Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker, 535 U.S. 125 (2002).

  16 Human Rights Watch, No Second Chance, i.

  17 Martha Nelson, Perry Dees, and Charlotte Allen, The First Month Out: Post-Incarceration Experiences in New York City (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 1999).

  18 Edward Rhine, William Smith, and Ronald Jackson, Paroling Authorities: Recent History and Current Practice (Laurel, MD: American Correctional Association, 1991).

  19 Gene Johnson, “‘Ban the Box’ Movement Gains Steam,” Wave Newspapers, New America Media, Aug. 15, 2006.

  20 Legal Action Center, After Prison: Roadblocks to Reentry, a Report on State Legal Barriers Facing People with Criminal Records (New York: Legal Action Center, 2004), 10.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Harry Holzer, Steven Raphael, and Michael Stoll, “Will Employers Hire Ex-Offenders? Employer Preferences, Background Checks and Their Determinants,” in The Impact of Incarceration on Families and Communities, ed. Mary Pattillo, David Weiman, and Bruce Western (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).

  23 Employers Group Research Services, “Employment of Ex-Offenders: A Survey of Employers’ Policies and Practices,” San Francisco: SF Works, Apr. 12, 2002.

  24 Jeremy Travis, Amy Solomon, and Michelle Waul, From Prison to Home: The Dimensions and Consequences of Prisoner Reentry (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2001); and Amy Hirsch et al., Every Door Closed: Barriers Facing Parents with Criminal Records (Washington, DC: Center for Law and Social Policy and Community Legal Services, 2002).

  25 Keith Ihlanfeldt and David Sjoquist, “The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: A Review of Recent Studies and Their Implications for Welfare Reform,” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 4 (1998): 849; and Michael Stoll, Harry Holzer, and Keith Ihlanfeldt, “Within Cities and Suburbs: Employment Decentralization, Neighborhood Composition, and Employment Opportunities for White and Minority Workers,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Spring 2000.

  26 Harry Holzer et al., “Employer Demand for Ex-Offenders: Recent Evidence from Los Angeles,” March 2003, unpublished manuscript.

  27 Wilson, When Work Disappears, 40.

  28 Andrew Jacobs, “Crime-Ridden Newark Tries Getting Jobs for Ex-Convicts, but finds Success Elusive,” New York Times, Apr. 27, 2008.

  29 Wilson, When Work Disappears, 41.

  30 Harry Holzer and Robert LaLonde, “Job Stability and Job Change Among Young Unskilled Workers,” in Finding Jobs: Work and Welfare Reform, ed. David Card and Rebecca Blank (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000); see also Joleen Kirshenman and Kathryn Neckerman, “We’d Love to Hire Them But . . .” in The Urban Underclass, ed. Christopher Jencks and Paul Peterson (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1991).

  31 Ibid., 942.

  32 Ibid., 962.

  33 Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), 90.

  34 Ibid., 91.

  35 See Devah Pager, Marked: Race, Crime and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 157; Steven Raphael, “Should Criminal History Records Be Universally Available?” (reaction essay) in Greg Pogarsky, “Criminal Records, Employment and Recidivism,” Criminology & Public Policy 5, no. 3 (Aug. 2006): 479-521; and Shawn Bushway, “Labor Market Effects of Permitting Employer Access to Criminal History Records,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 20 (2004): 276-91.

  36 Kirsten Livingston, “Making the Bad Guy Pay: Growing Use of Cost Shifting as Economic Sanction,” in Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration , ed. Tara Herivel and Paul Wright (New York: The New Press, 2007), 61.

  37 Ibid., 69, citing Ohio Rev. Code Ann. Sec. 2951.021 and Ohio Rev. Code Sec. 2951.021.

  38 Bureau of Justice Assistance, Repaying Debts (Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2007).

  39 “Out of Prison and Deep in Debt,” New York Times editorial, Oct. 6, 2007.

  40 Livingston, “Making the Bad Guy Pay,” 55.

  41 Ibid.

  42 Ryan S. King, Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States (Washington, DC: Sentencing Project, Sept. 2008).

  43 American Civil Liberties Union, Out of Step with the World: An Analysis of Felony Disenfranchisement in the U.S. and Other Democracies (New York, May 2006), 4.

  44 Ibid.

  45 Ibid., 6.

  46 See Laleh Ispahani and Nick Williams, Purged! (New York: American Civil Liberties Union, Oct. 2004); and Alec Ewald, A Crazy Quilt of Tiny Pieces: State and Local Administration of American Criminal Disenfranchisement Law (Washington, DC: Sentencing Project, Nov. 2005).

  47 Sasha Abramsky, Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House (New York: The New Press, 2006), 224.

  48 Ibid.

  49 Gail Russell Chaddock, “U.S. Notches World’s Highest Incarceration Rate,” Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 18, 2003.

  50 Abramsky, Conned, 207.

  51 Ibid., 207-8.

  52 Ibid.

  53 Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza, “Democratic Contraction? Political Consequences of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States,” American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 777.

  54 Manza and Uggen, Locked Out, 137.

  55 Abramsky, Conned, 206-7.

  56 See Kathryn Russell-Bro
wn, The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions (New York: New York University Press, 1998), coining the term criminalblackman.

  57 Manza and Uggen, Locked Out, 154.

  58 Ibid., 152.

  59 Human Rights Watch, No Second Chance, 79.

  60 Willie Thompson, interviewed by Guylando A. M. Moreno, Mar. 2008, Cincinnati, OH.

  61 Abramsky, Conned, 140.

  62 Donald Braman, Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 219.

  63 Ibid., 3, citing data from D.C. Department of Corrections (2000).

  64 See Todd Clear, Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 121-48.

  65 See, e.g., Steve Liss, No Place for Children: Voices from Juvenile Detention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). Stories include youth describing the verbal abuse they receive from their parents.

  66 Braman, Doing Time on the Outside, 171.

  67 Ibid., 219, fn. 2.

  68 See Deborah A. Prentice and Dale T. Miller, “Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Use on Campus: Some Consequences of Misperceiving the Social Norm,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, no. 2 (1993): 243-56.

  69 Braman, Doing Time on the Outside, 216.

  70 Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1999), 287.

  71 Braman, Doing Time on the Outside, 174.

  72 Ibid., 184.

  73 Ibid., 185.

  74 Ibid., 186.

  75 Ibid.

  76 Gerald Sider, “Against Experience: The Struggles for History, Tradition, and Hope Among a Native American People,” in Between History and Histories, ed. Gerald Sider and Gavin Smith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 74-75.

  77 Braman, Doing Time on the Outside, 220.

  78 Ibid.

  79 James Thomas Sears, Growing Up Gay in the South: Race, Gender, and Journeys of the Spirit (New York: Routledge, 1991), 257.

  80 Victor M. Rios, “The Hyper-Criminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth in the Era of Mass Incarceration,” unpublished manuscript on file with author.

  81 Robert Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth- Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 227.

  82 Ibid., 258.

  83 Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying and Signifying: The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor That Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 124-29.

  84 Ibid.; see also Toll, Blacking Up, 226.

  Chapter 5: The New Jim Crow

  1 Michael Eric Dyson, “Obama’s Rebuke of Absentee Black Fathers,” Time, June 19, 2008.

  2 Sam Roberts, “51% of Women Now Living with a Spouse, New York Times, Jan. 16, 2007.

  3 See Jonathan Tilove, “Where Have All the Men Gone? Black Gender Gap Is Widening,” Seattle Times, May 5, 2005; and Jonathan Tilove, “Where Have All the Black Men Gone?” Star-Ledger (Newark), May 8, 2005.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Cf., Salim Muwakkil, “Black Men: Missing,” In These Times, June 16, 2005.

  6 G. Garvin, “Where Have the Black Men Gone?,” Ebony, Dec. 2006.

  7 One in eleven black adults was under correctional supervision at year end 2007, or approximately 3.5 million people. See Pew Center on the States, One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections (Washington, DC: Pew Charitable Trusts, Mar. 2009). According to the 1850 Census, approximately 3.2 million black people were slaves.

  8 See Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, rev. ed., (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 110.

  9 See Glenn C. Loury, Race, Incarceration, and American Values (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), commentary by Pam Karlan.

  10 Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2001), 4-5.

  11 Iris Marilyn Young, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 92-99.

  12 Marilyn Frye, “Oppression,” in The Politics of Reality (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1983).

  13 See Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, eds., Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment (New York: The New Press, 2002); and Jeremy Travis, But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2005).

  14 Negley K. Teeters and John D. Shearer, The Prison at Philadelphia, Cherry Hill: The Separate System of Prison Discipline, 1829-1913 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 84.

  15 See David Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., 1999), 4, 7, 43-44, 219-20, describing the role of racial bias in earlier drug wars; and Doris Marie Provine, Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 37-90, describing racial bias in alcohol prohibition, as well as other drug wars.

  16 Mary Pattillo, David F. Weiman, and Bruce Western, Imprisoning America: The Social Effect of Mass Incarceration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), 2.

  17 Paul Street, The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs, and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (Chicago Urban League, Department of Research and Planning, 2002).

  18 Street, Vicious Circle, 3.

  19 Alden Loury, “Black Offenders Face Stiffest Drug Sentences,” Chicago Reporter , Sept. 12, 2007.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Street, Vicious Circle, 15.

  22 Donald G. Lubin et al., Chicago Metropolis 2020: 2006 Crime and Justice Index, (Washington, DC: Pew Center on the States, 2006), 5, www.pewcenteronthestates.org/report_detail.aspx?id=33022.

  23 Ibid., 37.

  24 Ibid., 35.

  25 Ibid., 3; see also Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), 12.

  26 Street, Vicious Circle, 3.

  27 Ibid.

  28 Ibid.

  29 See chapter 1, page 61, which describes the view that President Ronald Reagan’s appeal derived primarily from the “emotional distress of those who fear or resent the Negro, and who expect Reagan somehow to keep him ‘in his place’ or at least echo their own anger and frustration.”

  30 For an excellent discussion of the history of felon disenfranchisement laws, as well as their modern day impact, see Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

  31 Cotton v. Fordice, 157 F.3d 388, 391 (5th Cir. 1998); see also Martine J. Price, Note and Comment: Addressing Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement: Legislation v. Litigation, Brooklyn Journal of Law and Policy 11 (2002): 369, 382-83.

  32 See Jamie Fellner and Marc Mauer, Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States (Washington, DC: Sentencing Project, 1998).

  33 Loury, Race, Incarceration, and American Values, 48

  34 See Eric Lotke and Peter Wagner, “Prisoners of the Census: Electoral and Financial Consequences of Counting Prisoners Where They Go, Not Where They Come From,” Pace Law Review 24 (2004): 587, available at www.prisonpolicy.org/pace.pdf.

  35 See Batson v. Kentucky 476 U.S. 79 (1986), discussed in chapter 3, page 146.

  36 See Purkett v. Elm, 514 U.S. 765 discussed in chapter 3, page 150.

  37 Brian Kalt, “The Exclusion of Felons from Jury Service,” American University Law Review 53 (2003): 65.

  38 See Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (How. 19) 393 (1857).

  39 Travis, But They All Come Back, 132.

  40 Peter Wagner, “Prisoners of the Census”; for more information, see www.prisonersofthecensus.org.

  41 Travis, But They All Come Back, 281, citing James Lynch and William Sabol, Prisoner Reentry in Perspective, Crime Policy Report, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2001).

  42 Dina Ro
se, Todd Clear, and Judith Ryder, Drugs, Incarcerations, and Neighborhood Life: The Impact of Reintegrating Offenders into the Community (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 2002).

  43 Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, The Robert Taylor Homes Relocation Study (New York: Center for Urban Research and Policy, Columbia University, 2002).

  44 Street, Vicious Circle, 16.

  45 Ibid., 17.

  46 Keynote address by Paula Wolff at Annual Luncheon for Appleseed Fund for Justice and Chicago Council of Lawyers, Oct. 7, 2008, www.chicagometropolis2020.org/10_25.htm.

  47 Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson, The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004), 36, citing Mercer Sullivan, Getting Paid: Youth Crime and Work in the Inner City (New York: Cornell University Press, 1989).

  48 Ibid.

  49 Loïc Wacquant, “The New ‘Peculiar Institution’: On the Prison as Surrogate Ghetto,” Theoretical Criminology 4, no. 3 (2000): 377-89.

  50 See, e.g., Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  51 Whites are far more likely than African Americans to complete college, and college graduates are more likely to have tried illicit drugs in their lifetime when compared to adults who have not completed high school. See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Findings from the 2000 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (Rockville, MD: 2001). Adults who have not completed high school are disproportionately African American.

  52 Devah Pager, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 90-91, 146-47.

  53 John Edgar Wideman, “Doing Time, Marking Race,” The Nation, Oct. 30, 1995.

  54 See Julia Cass and Connie Curry, America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline (New York: Children’s Defense Fund, 2007).

  55 James Forman Jr., “Children, Cops and Citizenship: Why Conservatives Should Oppose Racial Profiling,” in Invisible Punishment, ed. Mauer and Lind, 159.