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"A Human Rights Nightmare is Occurring on Our Watch"

By Michael Blankenship

With 5% of the world's population, the United States today boasts 25% of its prison population. Despite declining crime rates in the last three decades (even in the midst of our current recession), rates of incarceration in the U.S. have been stunning. The Economist recently called this trend "a disgrace." Even more staggering has been the racial disparity in the people our nation incarcerates. In her new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Ohio State University legal scholar Michelle Alexander cogently considers the tidal wave of incarceration that has swept America in the past 30 years. She says mass incarceration has created a "new racial undercaste" which, although race-neutral on its face, has sharply greater impacts on people of color...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Justice Gambit on June 06, 2010 (boomark / email).