The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander · 2010
Alexander argued that mass incarceration (the War on Drugs and its racialized enforcement) functions as a new system of racial caste control, the heir to Jim Crow. The most important and controversial book about American criminal justice in decades, it changed the national conversation and launched the prison reform movement.
The case against
Alexander's argument leans hard on the drug war, but drug offenders are a minority of the prison population; violent crime convictions drive the numbers, which complicates the central analogy. The book also says less than it should about Black communities that demanded tougher policing. And the thesis, stated early, gets restated every chapter after.
Non-Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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