At the end of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander provides many example solutions for the systematic oppression that was presented throughout the book. Some of the practical solutions include community policing, increase funding for public defense, drug treatment for all Americans, and revoke all financial incentives for arresting drug offenders. While other solutions that were offered by Michelle Alexander were less practical, these include: legalize drugs, release prisoners, Affirmative Action, and end mandatory sentences for drugs.
Some of Michelle Alexander’s solutions are more plausible then others. For instance, she talks about going beyond community policing saying that police should …show more content…
Supplying drug treatment for all American would cost money, but would cause more success for fighting drugs then locking up millions of people (Alexander, p 233, 2010). Locking up drug users and giving them sentences that will remain on their records only prevents them from finding a good job and contributing to society. However, placing them in drug treatment centers would filter through the real heavy drug users and those who are willing to get better and make a change. In the end this would save money and do more against drugs then locking all offenders up would do. An additional solution that may be successful is revoking financial incentives given to police for high amounts of drug arrest, usually among African Americans (Alexander, p 232, 2010). Taking away these incentives will make following that laws easier for officers. This is because officers would not be forced to overuse stop and frisks for everyone they see that’s “suspicious,” as Michelle Alexander would conclude, black. It would untie the police officers hands and allow them to do what is right and only stop those who do give the officers reasonable suspicion. All four of these solutions are practical, some of the other solutions are not as …show more content…
If we can redirect the offenders then we can give them a better chance of not being caught doing drugs again. However, we would still have to find a way to end the drug war in order to stop the number of arrests. This is because The Drug War is the main cause for the increase in mass incarceration and “…major cause of poverty, chronic unemployment, broken families, and crime today” (Alexander, p 237, 2010). Therefore, redirecting those who are charged with drug crimes can help decrease all the social problems that being charged with drugs can cause until we can end the Drug War all together. Another solution that was not discussed is having officers focus on finding drug sellers and cartels rather than arresting the little users. If we can rehabilitate the users we find and then arrest the hard dealers then we can eliminate the amount of drugs available to the streets. More importantly this would cause the focus of arresting African American drug users to be redirected to the drugs and whoever is distributing them. That way it would be a focus strictly on drugs and not on race. These are only two solutions that could be used to put a little dent in the War on Drugs discrimination against African Americans. However, this solution would only take a wire or two
Some of Michelle Alexander’s solutions are more plausible then others. For instance, she talks about going beyond community policing saying that police should …show more content…
Supplying drug treatment for all American would cost money, but would cause more success for fighting drugs then locking up millions of people (Alexander, p 233, 2010). Locking up drug users and giving them sentences that will remain on their records only prevents them from finding a good job and contributing to society. However, placing them in drug treatment centers would filter through the real heavy drug users and those who are willing to get better and make a change. In the end this would save money and do more against drugs then locking all offenders up would do. An additional solution that may be successful is revoking financial incentives given to police for high amounts of drug arrest, usually among African Americans (Alexander, p 232, 2010). Taking away these incentives will make following that laws easier for officers. This is because officers would not be forced to overuse stop and frisks for everyone they see that’s “suspicious,” as Michelle Alexander would conclude, black. It would untie the police officers hands and allow them to do what is right and only stop those who do give the officers reasonable suspicion. All four of these solutions are practical, some of the other solutions are not as …show more content…
If we can redirect the offenders then we can give them a better chance of not being caught doing drugs again. However, we would still have to find a way to end the drug war in order to stop the number of arrests. This is because The Drug War is the main cause for the increase in mass incarceration and “…major cause of poverty, chronic unemployment, broken families, and crime today” (Alexander, p 237, 2010). Therefore, redirecting those who are charged with drug crimes can help decrease all the social problems that being charged with drugs can cause until we can end the Drug War all together. Another solution that was not discussed is having officers focus on finding drug sellers and cartels rather than arresting the little users. If we can rehabilitate the users we find and then arrest the hard dealers then we can eliminate the amount of drugs available to the streets. More importantly this would cause the focus of arresting African American drug users to be redirected to the drugs and whoever is distributing them. That way it would be a focus strictly on drugs and not on race. These are only two solutions that could be used to put a little dent in the War on Drugs discrimination against African Americans. However, this solution would only take a wire or two