Michelle Alexander’s critical analysis of the US criminal justice system contained in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness has received extraordinary critical and popular acclaim. Her main thesis, that mass incarceration constitutes a new system of racial oppression akin to slavery and the original Jim Crow, has had a profound impact on mainstream and academic framing of criminal justice issues. This article outlines her main thesis, then builds on and critiques her work by interrogating her notion of ‘racial caste’, updating her statistical breakdown of the racial demographics of the incarcerated population, and outlining the constituencies and organizations which are essential to the building of a social movement to reverse the mass incarceration process.
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