Liliana Segura interviews Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, who puts the Supreme Court's recent decision on California prisons in context:
The Supreme Court has stood quietly by in the era of mass incarceration. And in fact, to the extent that they've raised their voices at all, it has only been to facilitate the War on Drugs. The US Supreme Court has eviscerated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, giving the police license to sweep communities, to conduct “stop and frisk” operations. The Supreme Court has made it nearly impossible to prove race discrimination in the criminal justice system. Only now that states are faced with such severe economic crises that they are unable to build enough prisons to house inmates without risking their lives does the Supreme Court step in and say, Well, if you can't afford to build more prisons, then you're going have to start releasing some people.
I wonder if someday we might get to a similar tipping point with the "war on terror."
