Profit-Seeking Motives and Racist Policy in Tennessee’s Criminal Justice System: A Triangulative Analysis

Abstract

Using triangulative research methodology, this article examines the impact of the criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex on disenfranchised African Americans and social inequality in Tennessee. The investigation critically examines the ethically questionable public-private business relationships and other arrangements that contribute to socially constructed economic policy instruments used to fulfill conservatives’ and White supremacists’ objectives for continual White domination in Tennessee. The substantive findings reveal how the criminal justice system impacts political, economic, and social inequality in the African American community. Due to their considerably diminished capabilities to achieve political and economic equality, one of the recommendations of the study is that streamlining the voting restoration process is necessary for rectifying felony disenfranchised, thereby restoring a fundamental ethos of citizenship to those who have lost their right to vote.