The American public is becoming increasingly aware of the phenomenon of mass incarceration of people of color—specifically Black and Hispanic men—due largely (though not exclusively) to the “war on drugs.” Popular books such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, make it abundantly clear that our criminal justice system features a patchwork of laws that result in the incarceration of Black and Hispanic men in numbers that far exceed their relative proportion in the general population. This racialized mass incarceration is unfair, misguided, unsustainable and racist. Read more….