When 'Law and Order' is Intended to Create Mass Incarceration

Today I started reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

I'm not sure what to say about it quite yet.  Her erudition is impressive.  The way that she comprehends the American narrative against the backdrop of white supremacy and the racial caste system are....well...that's just it.  I feel like I've been slapped in the face.  There's a dark history that undergirds civilization.  Not just "civilization" in the abstract.  Not some people far away.  It's embedded in the history in which my own story has emerged.  It's in the American narrative.

I can't unsee that.  You can't really go back after reading this book.  And I'm only in chapter 1.

I mean, I generally knew how slavery came about, it's economic foundations, what Jim Crow laws were, what Reconstruction was, the 13th and 14th amendments, etc.  But I didn't really know.  I still don't, but I know more now than I did 2 hours ago.

I'm sort of reeling right now, and just wanted to jot down some thoughts while they're fresh in my mind.

Particularly important is this passage on page 31:

"The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. constitution had abolished slavery, but allowed one major exception: slavery remained appropriate as punishment for a crime."

This statement is given flesh and blood in light of the Black Codes written into Southern law in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

I'd never heard of them before.  Think of them as a precursor to Jim Crow.  Basically, the South wanted to keep slavery but they couldn't outright have slavery - not in the same form anyways.  So the South sought to establish a system that resembled slavery through the passage of certain laws called the Black Codes.

Closely related to (or perhaps a particular form of) these black codes were "convict laws".  While Alexander notes that convict laws were "rarely seen as part of the black codes, that is a mistake."

Convict laws were put in place to handle "convicted black law breakers."

Who were these law breakers?

After the war ended and slaves were granted their freedom, many simply walked away from their plantations.  Having nowhere meaningful to go and no means to get there, some simply roamed the highways.  Fears of an insurrection dominated the Southern imagination, not to mention that local economies would collapse without that slave labor.

Never mind all that.  What laws did they break?

Here's where it gets really crazy.

"Nine Southern states adopted vagrancy laws - which essentially made it a criminal offense not to work and were applied selectively to blacks - and eight of those states enacted convict laws allowing for the hiring-out of county prisoners to planation owners and private companies.  Prisoners were forced to work for little or no pay.  One vagrancy act specifically provided that "all free negroes and mulattoes over the age of eighteen" must have written proof of a job at the beginning of every year.  Those found with no lawful employment were deemed vagrants and convicted." (p 27)

Basically, if these freed slaves weren't working (I wonder where they could get jobs), they were deemed criminals.  Create laws, and then convict the law breakers.  What right has the federal government to intrude upon the sovereignty of the State to set constitutionally consistent laws that were good for their citizens (that's sarcasm)?  Law and order.  In any case, these former slaves were prosecuted and locked up - mass incarceration style.  Local plantations came to agreements to put these "criminals" to good social use.  The result?  The "criminals" ended up back on plantations, working for little or no pay, paying off their "debt to society".

It's staggering to me.

"Law and order" led to mass incarceration which was the means by which newly gained civil rights were denied and white Southern control was maintained.