This list of resources is inspired by Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, published in 2010.
The New Jim Crow: Ten Years Later
Interview with Michelle Alexander on the New Yorker Radio Hour, 1/17/20
Introductory resources
- “Criminal Justice Facts” (The Sentencing Project)
- “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet” (NAACP)
- “Racial Disparity: Lifetime Likelihood of Imprisonment” (The Sentencing Project)
- “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020”
- “Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm”
- Michelle Alexander’s 2013 Ted Talk video where she introduces the basic concepts in her book
- “What Is Prison Abolition?”
- “Michelle Alexander: White Men Get Rich from Legal Pot, Black Men Stay in Prison”
- “This American War on Drugs” (podcast from On the Media)
- Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th
- The Talk: Race in America (PBS film)
- Slavery by Another Name (book and PBS film)
- “Not to be Trusted: Dangerous Levels of Inaccuracy in TV Crime Reporting in NYC”
- “The War on Marijuana in Black and White” (ACLU Report)
- “Watch This Neuroscientist Perfectly Tear Down the Biggest Myths About the War on Drugs”
- “What It’s Like to Be Black in the Criminal Justice System: These eight charts suggest there are racial disparities at every phase of the justice system”
- “Surest Way to Face Marijuana Charges in New York: Be Black or Hispanic”
- “Racism in criminal justice reaches far beyond Ferguson: The racism of the US justice system in 10 charts”
- “Ferguson’s dark, twisted lesson: What police crackdowns & “Oath Keepers” reveal on the anniversary of a tragedy”
- “Mass Incarceration, Visualized”
- “The Enduring Myth of Black Criminality”
- “The Scourge of Racial Bias in New York State’s Prisons”
- “The Supreme Court Gives Police a Green Light to ‘Shoot First and Think Later’”
- “Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers” (The Sentencing Project)
- Bryan Stevenson: History NOW video
- Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (see his Ted Talk here)
- “The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons” (The Sentencing Project)
- Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time by James Kilgore
- “Former Nixon Advisor Admits ‘War on Drugs’ Was Racist”
- “There was no wave of compassion when addicts were hooked on crack”
- “Why are black Americans less affected by the opioid epidemic? Racism, probably.”
- “White Privilege Helps Explain The Opioid Epidemic”
- “The Pain Hustlers”
- “How OxyContin Was Sold to the Masses” (podcast from The New Yorker Radio Hour)
- “The Legal System Uses an Algorithm to Predict If People Might Be Future Criminals. It’s Biased Against Blacks.”
- Busted: Common Roadside Drug Test Routinely Produces False Positives
- US Dept. of Justice: Report on the Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department
- “Ferguson Approves a Federal Plan to Overhaul Police and Courts”
- “A Small Indiana County Sends More People to Prison Than San Francisco and Durham, N.C., Combined. Why?”
- Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice by Adam Benforado
- Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter edited by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton
- FREE CeCe! Jac Gares Media, Inc., 2016. [This documentary features Cece McDonald, a trans woman of color who was incarcerated in a men’s prison for defending herself against a racist and transphobic attack.]
- “Three New Books Discuss How to Confront and Reform Racist Policing”
- “A Weed Boom, But For Whom?” (podcast from NPR’s Code Switch)
Girls and women
- “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected”
- “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood”
- “How ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Misrepresents Women’s Federal Prison and Why It Matters”
- “Number of Women in Jail Has Grown Far Faster Than That of Men, Study Says”
- Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique Morris
Family
- “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration”
- “Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes”
- “Foster Care as Punishment: The New Reality of ‘Jane Crow’”
Plea deals
- Frontline video, “The Plea,” 2004 (includes an interview with Erma Faye Stewart, who Alexander describes in Chapter 3)
- “Due Process is Dead: A Staggering 95% of All Inmates in America Have Never Received a Trial”
- “Trial by Jury, a Hallowed American Right, Is Vanishing”
Debtors’ prison
- “Debtors’ Prison in 21st-Century America: For failing to pay parking tickets, court fees, and other petty municipal citations, black residents of Greater St. Louis are ending up behind bars”
- ACLU: Debtors’ Prisons
- “Why I refuse to send people to jail for failure to pay fines”
- “When a Prison Sentence Never Truly Ends”
- “The Fines and Fees That Keep Former Prisoners Poor”
- “The Color of Debt: How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods”
- “The Dangerous Domino Effect of Not Making Bail: America’s money-bail system mostly traps low-level offenders who can’t afford their freedom while awaiting trial”
- “Economic Disparity Is Seen in California Driver’s License Suspensions”
- “For Offenders Who Can’t Pay, It’s a Pint of Blood or Jail Time”
- “Chain Gang 2.0: If You Can’t Afford This GPS Ankle Bracelet, You Get Thrown In Jail”
- “Police Shootings Won’t Stop Unless We Also Stop Shaking Down Black People”
Corporate profit from the War on Drugs and mass incarceration
- “Cities across Alabama cancel contracts with company sued by SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center]”
- “The High Cost of Calling the Imprisoned”
- “13 Mainstream Corporations Benefiting from the Prison Industrial Complex”
- “Report: Michigan failed to hold Aramark accountable”
- “Why Mass Incarceration Doesn’t Pay”
- “America’s Cash Bail System Is a Disgrace”
Implicit bias
Juries
- “Exhaustive new study finds black jurors struck from juries 300% more than their white peers”
- “How America Tolerates Racism in Jury Selection”
Public Defenders
School-to-prison pipeline
- “How the Criminalization of Adolescence Fuels the School-to-Prison Pipeline”
- “The hidden racism of school discipline, in 7 charts”
- “Black Students In The U.S. Get Criminalized While White Students Get Treatment”
- “When Teachers Punish Black Kids More Severely Than White Kids”
- “Racial Profiling in Preschool”
- “My son has been suspended five times. He’s 3. Black families fight entrenched prejudices to get fair discipline for their children in schools”
- “Why Are Black Students Punished So Often? Minnesota Confronts a National Quandary”
- “Experiment Shows Teachers View ‘Deshawns’ More Harshly Than ‘Gregs’”
- Report: “Disproportionate Impact of K-12 School Suspension and Expulsion on Black Students in Southern States”
- “Pa. Judge Sentenced To 28 Years In Massive Juvenile Justice Bribery Scandal”
- “How Police Became Part of the Public School System and How to Get Them Out”
- “New Data Shows The School-To-Prison Pipeline Starts As Early As Preschool”
- “Black Students’ Lives Matter: Building the school-to-justice pipeline”
Prison labor
- “Infographic: Prison and Climate Change – #FloodTheSystem: From enabling disaster capitalism to compounding horrid living conditions, this infographic exposes the connections between the prison system and climate change”
- “Prisoners Who Fight Wildfires in California: An Insider’s Look”
College Education
- New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons Consortium (NJ-STEP)
- “A College Education for Prisoners”
- “Underground Scholars Initiative builds the prison-to-school pipeline, supports formerly-incarcerated so they can graduate from UC Berkeley”
- “Turn Prisons Into Colleges”
Reentry
- A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project
- “NY Film Program Gives Inmates Tools for Reentry”
- “Building a Prison-to-Promise Pipeline”
- “Reentry Education Toolkit”
- “How the Food Industry is Providing Second Chances to the Formerly Incarcerated”
- “Denying Housing Over Criminal Record May Be Discrimination, Feds Say”
- “The ‘Slave Power’ Behind Florida’s Felon Disenfranchisement”
- “A Home After Prison”
Action
- Equal Justice Initiative
- Color of Change
- Prison Divestment Movement
- National Prison Divestment Campaign (see Enlace and the corresponding Toolkit for Campus Organizers)
- “7 Ways to Turn Your Anger Over Sandra Bland Into Action In Support of Incarcerated (and Formerly Incarcerated) Black Women”
- Ban the Box
- Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth
- “Undoing the damage of mass incarceration” (by a retired federal judge)
- “Why Federal Sentencing Reform Would Make a Difference — Particularly for Communities of Color”
- “Students Are Fighting to Force Colleges to Stop Asking About Criminal Records”
Action in NJ
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