New Jim Crow in the US

Wow. I didn’t know these statistics:

There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.</blockquote> I had no idea how thorough-going our system of incarceration has become. The Bible calls us to visit the prisoner, and that might be the only way we learn these realities.

Federal laws allow law enforcement agencies to keep 80% of the cash, cars, homes, and other things they seize from drug offenders. These laws also incentivize the volume of drug arrests, rather than arrests aimed at drug dealers and drug producers. So that the majority of drug offenders who are under the control of the criminal system are there for drug consumption arrests, that is, they are nonviolent offenders.

Part two: