How The Government Weaponizes Crime To Keep The Working Class Down

Co-authors of States of Incarceration Rebellion Reform and America's punishment system Jared Shanahan and Jandarka Corti join the program to discuss the state of mass incarceration in the United States.

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Check out more from the MR crew:

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Besides the fact that we literally jail more people on this planet than in any other country, what makes incarceration in the United States so unique? Jandarka I'll turn to you with that. Yeah sure that's a really good question and I think something that there's a lot of conversations about it so it's amazing that that's also happening and I think that's also a result of the Rebellion. People are way more interested now in talking about incarceration and police violence. So mass incarceration is usually the term that's given to Define this experiment that American American institutions embarked on starting in the 1970s that led to an exponential increase in the number of people who are jailed and incarcerated in jails and prisons in the United States. And there's like all these charts you can look up online but it seems that the U.S imprisonment rate was relatively steady up until the 1970s and 1980s. And then we see this huge jump of you know up to upwards of over 200 percent 300 400 percent. So mass incarceration usually refers to this. And also refers to the Stark racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Again you know when we look at African-Americans incarceration trade is oftentimes five times or six times that of whites. Latinos are about three to four times as whites. So we also see a system that's very disproportionately racialized right? However, something that Jared and I are really clear about and this is again we're not unique. Part of writing this book and thinking about this has been in conversation with other Scholars and other activists who are also saying this. is that the focus on mass incarceration alone does not take into account how the criminal justice system has become one of the main ways in which people experience the state today right? That it goes beyond jails and prisons it goes to the most Plutonian police encounter the traffic stop right? It also expands to probation and parole. So it's really kind of an expansive system of various institutions that seek to stigmatize surveillance and punish the poor in America.