Nutshell Studies: Alexander (2010)

The second Nutshell Study does a quick’n’dirty hack-job on Michelle Alexander’s 2010 study “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” – the idea being, as with everything in this series, “to make it easier for students to get to grips with significant classic and contemporary sociological studies in a simple, straightforward, way that doesn’t involve a shed-load of frankly quite time-consuming reading”.

Nutshell Studies give you the basic ideas in a handy bite-sized way that provides a solid source to back-up your exam arguments – to which end I’ve added a new section (Exam Tips and Where to Apply Them) to the familiar three related parts:

1. Illustration: This provides an everyday example to illustrate the basic ideas the author of a study is trying to get across. Think of this section as a simple way to understand the more-sociological content of:

2. Insights: This is a short list of the key ideas put forward by the author. It’s purposely-designed to be short, sweet, snappy and memorable.

3. Implications: The 3^rd and final section provides a quick list of the implications the featured findings have for a range of broad sociological perspectives, something that can be useful for comparative / evaluative purposes.

Disclaimer

Nutshell Studies are in no conceivable way a substitute for reading the actual study. But since we all know that’s not going to happen it’ll just be our little secret.

Alexander “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (2010)

Illustration: “The School To Jail Pipeline For Black Youth”

Tyrone, an 18-year-old Black student from a low-income American neighbourhood, is stopped by police for a minor drug offence. Although this is relatively common among teens of all races, Black and Native American boys are more likely to be arrested and detained for cannabis possession than their white peers, even when usage rates are similar. The usual punishments for this type of offence involve diversion into drug education programmes, probation, or counselling.

For Black boys like Tyrone, however, it’s much more common for arrest to be followed by a plea deal and a felony conviction.

After prison, Tyrone cannot vote, struggles to get a job and is denied housing. Although he served his time in prison for an offence his white peers are rarely imprisoned, society treats him like a second-class citizen in ways that impact negatively on the rest of his life.

it’s part of a system that quietly re-creates

Alexander argues this experience isn’t an isolated case involving “rogue individuals”; it’s a pattern of behaviour repeated across the United States that systematises racial segregation through mass incarceration – the so-called “the school to prison pipeline”. It is, she argues, how the criminal justice system creates a new racial underclass, in a way that mirrors the Jim Crow laws that operated from the end if the Civil War until the late 1960’s…

Insights…

Social Control: Alexander argues the American criminal justice system has systematically replaced old forms of racial control – such as the “Black Codes” created in many Southern States to restrict the rights (the type of work they could do, the wages they were paid) of newly freed African Americans during the Reconstruction Era – with a racialised caste system based on mass incarceration. Poor, black, youth are the New Underclass in this system.

The War on Drugs as a gateway to incarceration: Although drug use is similar across all ethnicities in America, Black communities are disproportionately targeted for arrest and imprisonment. The so-called “war on drugs” is, in this respect, a way for a racialised system of justice to operate “in plain sight”.

Legal discrimination post-prison: Once labelled as a felon, individuals lose their rights around voting, housing and employment and this creates a permanent underclass for whom crime and criminality may be the only way to survive. The system creates, in effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy that both justifies and punishes “black criminality”.

“Colourblind” laws with racist outcomes: The American legal system, with its credo of “equality under the law”, becomes the perfect cover for discriminatory practices. While the laws themselves are not overtly discriminatory their enforcement and impact are deeply racialised: discrimination results from the way laws are selectively applied against some social groups but not others…

Implications…

Perspective	Implications
Marxism	The justice system serves ruling-class interests by controlling and excluding the poor.
Functionalism	Challenges the idea that laws maintain social order fairly. This shows both dysfunction and inequality.
Labelling Theory	Felony labels become master statuses, shaping identity and limiting life chances.
Conflict Theory	Highlights power struggles within societies where laws are selectively used to maintain power domination over marginalised groups.

Exam Tips and Where to Apply Them

Official crime statistics: Challenges the idea that crime rates reflect actual offending. Consider how enforcement bias affects the validity of official statistics as measures of crime and criminality.

Social control: Alexander’s work suggests one way institutions in democratic societies enforce and maintain inequality through legal means.

Ethnicity and crime: The study is a key critique of the idea the justice system is neutral. She demonstrates how racial assumptions and biases are built into the system.