Many of the current reform efforts contain the seeds of the next generation of racial and social control, a system of “e-carceration” that may prove more dangerous and more difficult to challenge than the one we hope to leave behind.īail reform is a case in point. This progress is unquestionably good news, but there are warning signs blinking brightly. Since 2010, when I published “The New Jim Crow” - which argued that a system of legal discrimination and segregation had been born again in this country because of the war on drugs and mass incarceration - there have been significant changes to drug policy, sentencing and re-entry, including “ ban the box” initiatives aimed at eliminating barriers to employment for formerly incarcerated people. These are the latest examples of the astonishing progress that has been made in the last several years on a wide range of criminal justice issues. In the midterms, Michigan became the first state in the Midwest to legalize marijuana, Florida restored the vote to over 1.4 million people with felony convictions, and Louisiana passed a constitutional amendment requiring unanimous jury verdicts in felony trials.
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