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Search And Seizure Laws In Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow

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Search and seizure laws have been around since the beginning of the United States of America, and have a very controversial history.Many deem the way the laws are practiced unconstitutional, and oppressive to minorities, while others think they are just and need to be carried out to stop crime. Police officers have found many missing persons and have also brought down many drug dealers all while staying in the lines of legal search and seizure. Many people fear officers can overstep their boundaries and think that search and seizure laws are the underlying cause of mass incarceration, which Michelle Alexander examines in her book The New Jim Crow.
The fourth amendment prohibits those from being victim to unreasonable searches and seizures. What defines …show more content…
it is a tool officers use to protect your well-being. Searches are not meant to oppress minorities, but it is meant to oppress criminals. When an officer is pursuing a suspected criminal, he or she is likely not pursuing the suspect because of race, but because of the actions he or she has committed. For every life “ruined by being imprisoned” Alexander puts it, there are lives saved by searches of suspicious people and seizure of their illegal paraphernalia. Search and seizure laws have been around since the beginning of the United States of America, and have a very controversial history.Many deem the way the laws are practiced unconstitutional, and oppressive to minorities, while others think they are just and need to be carried out to stop crime. Police officers have found many missing persons and have also brought down many drug dealers all while staying in the lines of legal search and seizure. Many people fear officers can overstep their boundaries and think that search and seizure laws are the underlying cause of mass incarceration, which Michelle Alexander examines in her book The New Jim

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