A recent provocative show on the National Public Radio show, Fresh Air, involved an interview with a legal scholar who has recently written a book that examines racism in the criminal justice system in the U.S. The legal scholar is an African American woman and used to work as a criminal defense attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. She also used to work with people who were recently released from prison in order to help them get reintegrated into society.

Through her work and research she came to believe that the Jim Crow laws that used to keep African Americans from full, equal participation in society are still alive in the way that massive numbers of African Americans, particularly young African American men, are imprisoned. The scholar pointed out in the interview that more African American people are currently in jail, prison or under probation or parole than were slaves in 1850.

In addition, she points out that more than half of African American men in major cities in the U.S. are under some kind of correctional control or have been convicted of felonies, which means they are stripped of many civil rights, such as voting, serving on juries and from being free from employment discrimination.

The scholar points out that this system may ultimately take away many of the rights that African Americans gained during the Civil Rights Movement. She believes that this may have been contributed to by the war on drugs that started in the 80s and resulted in many African American people being sent to prison for minor drug crimes. The recent retroactive passage of the Fair Sentencing Act (as discussed in the previous two blog posts) may be a step in the right direction toward improving this issue.

Source: NPR Books, "Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists in America," Fresh Air, Jan. 16, 2012