I don't have to do your research for you. If you have evidence, post it.
O.K. Here’s a portion of “The New Jim Crow,” which I have read and reread: Today, most Americans know and don’t know the truth about mass incarceration. For more than three decades, images of black men in handcuffs have been a regular staple of the evening news. It is precisely because we know that black and brown people are far more likely to be imprisoned that we, as a nation, have not cared too much about it. We tell ourselves they “deserve” their fate, even though we know – and don’t know – that whites are just as likely to commit crimes, especially drug crimes.
Most Americans come to “know” about the people cycling in and out of prisons through fictional police dramas, music videos, gangsta rap and “true” accounts of ghetto experience on the evening news. These racialized narratives tend to confirm and reinforce the prevailing public consensus that we need not care about “these people”: they deserve what they get.
The War on Drugs is the vehicle through which extraordinary numbers of black men are forced into the cage.
The first stage is the roundup. Vast numbers of people are swept into the criminal justice system by the police, who CONDUCT DRUG OPERATIONS PRIMARILY IN POOR COMMUNITIES OF COLOR. They are rewarded in cash – through drug forfeiture laws and federal grant programs – for rounding up as many people as possible. The can stop, interrogate and search anyone they choose. Racial biases are granted free reign. Police are allowed to rely on race as a factor in selecting whom to stop and search – effectively guaranteeing that those who are swept up into the system are primarily black and brown.
Second stage is the period of formal control. Once arrested, defendants are generally denied meaningful representation and pressured to plead guilty whether they are or not. Prosecutors are free to “load up” defendants with extra charges, and their decisions cannot be challenged for racial bias.
The final stage is the period of invisible punishment. There is a unique set of criminal sanctions imposed on individuals after they step outside the prison gate. These sanctions are imposed by operation of law rather than decisions of a sentencing judge, yet they have a greater impact on one’s life course than the months or years one actually spends behind bars. They will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives – denied employment, housing, education and public benefits. Unable to surmount these obstacles, most will eventually return to prison, caught in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality. They become members of an undercaste – an enormous population of predominantly black and brown people who are denied basic rights and privileges of American citizenship and are permanently relegated to an inferior status.
Race has always influenced the administration of justice in the United States. Since the day the first prison opened, people of color have been disproportionately represented behind bars. The nature of the criminal justice system is this – it is no longer concerned primarily with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.”
I could give you plenty more from this 312 page book which took years to research and write, but I’ll keep it for another day.