North Carolina Prisons End Ban on Best-Selling “Mass Incarceration” Book
The North Carolina prison system on this day ended its ban on the best selling book on mass incarceration. The book in question was The New Jim Crow, a huge best-selling book by Michelle Alexander.
The ban was dropped in response to a suit by the ACLU of North Carolina. Prison officials also said they would “review” bans on other currently prohibited books.
Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness had a huge impact on public thinking about imprisonment in America since it was published in 2012). Instead of the conventional approach of thinking about prisons in terms of “overcrowding,” Alexander’s book redefined the issue in terms of systematic race discrimination (“the new Jim Crow’) and a concerted attempt to control the African American population.
Learn more about imprisonment in America at The Sentencing Project.
Read: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, 10th Anniversary edition (2020)
Learn more about the North Carolina ACLU here.