You are hopefully coming to this blog post frustrated after playing “The Great Escape: The Ups and Downs of Ex-Convicts.” Your frustration is purposeful, our game seeks to highlight the institutional provisions that make it hard for ex-convicts to “reintegrate” into society and not turn back to crime upon release. The unfortunate reality is that our justice system works to create crime and not prevent it while doing its best to keep incarcerated citizens powerless to resist turning back to crime.
One question you may be asking, however, is how such an unfair system got set up in the first place. According to Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, it all started with the rise of Civil Rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s. She writes, “Conservative whites began, once again, to search for a new racial order… understanding that whatever the new order would be, it would have to be formally race-neutral—it could not involve explicit or clearly intentional race discrimination” (40). The end of the Jim Crow era highlighted the end of explicit racism and bias, and as a result, political conservatives had to find another way to keep minorities in check. However, whatever their solution would be, it would have to be so institutionalised that it is almost impossibly to identify. They found a powerful solution — associating minorities with crime.
In response to civil rights tactics and protests, Southern leaders began to use language that made their actions seem condemnable by law. Alexander writes, “Southern governors and law enforcement officials often characterized these tactics as criminal and argued that the rise of the Civil Rights Movement was indicative of a breakdown of law and order” (40). In other words, Southern leaders played on the fear of American citizens, claiming that Civil Rights protests were disruptive and dangerous (despite being well within their first-amendment rights). This rhetoric eventually became adopted by Republican presidential candidates, who believed that they could send subliminal messages to anti-black voters to ascertain a majority. In fact, John Ehrlichman, counsel to Nixon’s campaign, summed up their strategy in this way: “‘We’ll go after the racists’” (Alexander 44).
The genius in such a solution has to do with society’s perception of crime. New York University professor and former president of the American Society of Criminology Jerome H. Skolnick writes in his article, Tough Guys, “Those who commit violent crime do so because they are ‘morally impoverished’ from never having the benefit of ‘loving, capable, responsible adults who teach the young right from wrong’” (87). Because society views crime as something that is avoidable, what could possibly be wrong with punishing those who are breaking the law? As a result, political conservatives found a way to target certain groups of people — while claiming that it is morally responsible for them to do so. Thus, their actions could not possibly be called racist.
Of course, this societal viewpoint ignores the institutional factors that lead to crime, such as racism, and institutionalized educational inequality/poverty. Regardless, this rhetoric was picked up immediately by the media. The image of the black criminal soared to public view, and terms such as “superpredators” and “wolfpacks” demonstrated society’s fear of violent crime. “They never explicitly link young black males with the ‘superpredator’ label, but the connection is unmistakable”, Skolick says. “Terms like ‘moral poverty,’ ‘superpredator,’… pander to racist prejustice” (89).
This viewpoint was utilized in other ways as well. “Conservatives argued that poverty was caused not by structural factors related to race and class but rather by culture—particularly black culture” (Alexander 45). Conservatives began to criticize the government expansion of welfare, exaggerating on society’s depiction of the lazy citizen. They redefined society’s expectations of black people by stating that black economic immobility was due to their involvement with street crime and illegal drug use. As a result, it became to be understood that black people were generally criminals, abusing government welfare to survive while entertaining themselves with drugs and crime.
The results of such rhetoric were effective. “By 1972, attitudes on racial issues rather than socioeconomic status were the primary determinant of voters’ political self-identification” (Alexander 47). Republicans had successfully polarized the political landscape in their favor based off of race, and used this to rise to power. Then, after associating black people with crime and taking control of the government, Republicans put the final nail in the coffin — implementing “get tough on crime” policies and waging the infamous War on Drugs.
The results of these policies have been profound. Deborah Small, leader of Break the Chains: Communities of Color and the War on Drugs, reports in her article, The War on Drugs Is a War on Racial Justice, “United States drug laws, while superficially neutral, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased… one out of every three Black men in their twenties is now in prison or jail, on probation, or parole on any given day. Blacks constitute 13 percent of all drug users, but 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of those sent to prison [in 2000]” (897).
That brings us to where we are today: the system of mass incarceration. We live in a society where black people are still associated with crime, and as a result, are disproportionately punished for it. “The disproportionate arrests—and media coverage—feed the mistaken assumption that Blacks use drugs at higher rates than Whites and serve as justification for continued racial profiling” (Small 897). This societal myth, that African-Americans use and distribute drugs much more often than whites, continues to serve as justification for racial profiling and the disproportionate arrest/conviction of black people.
In conclusion, the current system of mass incarceration is an extremely effective and ingeniously colorblind form of social control, created in response to the end of the Jim Crow era. Their solution — our current justice system, a system that is so institutionalised it is almost impossible to identify, yet sends minorities to prison at disproportionately higher rates than whites. Then, by stripping some of their rights, such as the right to vote and access to welfare, felons are demoted to a second-class status, which is perpetualized when their reentry into the justice system affects their children and families.
Keypressing with Kyle 