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Over the past 30 years the prison population has quintupled, from 300k-350k to well over two million, says Michelle Alexander , author of The New Jim Crow . She points out that while the incarceration rates have gone up, crime rates have fluctuated up and down during this same time period, saying "Most criminologists and sociologists today will agree that crime rates and incarceration rates have moved independently of one another."
She explains that the War On Drugs and the "Get Tough" movement account for this difference, and goes on to say that minorities are disproportionately affected because police friskings and arrests do not happen in white suburbs and college campuses as often as in poor communities of color, even though drug usage is similar across racial lines. Read the full article.
