Lindsey

“Violence in struggling black communities is deeply rooted in conditions beyond the direct control of the individuals who live there, including the profound inequalities and indignities created by the legacies of slavery, segregation, ghet-toization, and widespread legal discrimination and stigmatization in the era of mass incarceration.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“I also believed—and I still believe—that the prevailing view that mass incarceration has been driven by arrests and convictions for violent crime is simply wrong. It is a lie that has been invoked to excuse and rationalize the intentional infliction of suffering on millions of people.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“In fact, our system is primarily concerned with the perpetual control and marginalization of the dispossessed; it is not designed to respond meaningfully to the harms of violence”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“When I sat down to write The New Jim Crow, I wanted to expose the literal war that has been waged against our communities, a drug war in which millions were taken prisoner and tens of millions were criminalized, placed on probation or parole, and then released into a permanent second-class status often for simple possession of marijuana or some other drug for personal use.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness