Prisons - AFF 1ACs Obviously don’t read both racism and gender – pick one and then read framing. 1AC – Racism Harsh sentencing laws render those who commit minor crimes dangerous felons who are now barred from mainstream society and relegated to second-class status. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf Once a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal, and privileges of citizenship such as voting and jury service are off-limits. It does not matter whether you have actually spent time in prison; your second-class citizenship begins the moment you are branded a felon. Most people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison. As of 2008, there were approximately 2.3 million people in prisons and jails, and a staggering 5.1 million people under "community correctional supervision"—i.e., on probation or parole.89 Merely reducing prison terms does not have a major impact on the majority of people in the system . It is the badge of inferiority — the felony record— that relegates people for their entire lives, to second-class status . As described in chapter 4, for drug felons, there is little hope of escape. Barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to "check the box" indicating a felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and denied licenses for a wide range of professions, people whose only crime is drug addiction or possession of a small amount of drugs for recreational use find themselves locked out of the mainstream society and economy—permanently . Statistics show that African Americans are disproportionately surveilled and abused by police officers Nkechi Taifa 97, clinical instructor at Howard University School of Law and Director of Howard Clinical Law Center's Public Service Program, Spring 1997, ‘THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION (CERD): ARTICLE: Codification or Castration? The Applicability of the International Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Racial Discrimination to the U.S. Criminal Justice System,” Howard Law Journal, 40 How. L.J. 641 Statistics reveal that African Americans are far more likely to be physically abused and /or murdered by police officers charged to protect them. n157 Indeed, by the admission of some police officers, race is [*671 ] used as a determinative factor in deciding who to follow, detain, search, and arrest. n158¶ The lengthy history of police brutality against people of color is legion, and is still very prevalent today. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division receives about 8,000 complaints each year, with 75 to 85 percent of them involving problems with police. Most of these allegations are made by people of color. n159 "Police brutality as it relates to African Americans and minorities is real," observed Congressional Black Caucus Chairperson Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA). " The bigger and blacker you are, the more at risk you are ." n160¶ On March 3, 1991 , eighty-one seconds of videotape filmed by a private citizen brought into national focus the blatant police brutality that is a tragic part of the African American experience. Rodney King, unarmed and clearly no visible threat to the fifteen or more policemen that surrounded him, received fifty-six blows and electric shocks from four White police officers. n161 Beamed into homes across the country was the image of Sergeant Stacey Koon twice firing a 50,000- volt Taser "stun gun" at the prostrate King, while three other members of the LAPD "took turns kicking him and smashing him in the head, neck, kidneys and legs with their truncheons." n162 As a result of this severe beating, King received 11 skull fractures, a crushed cheekbone, a broken ankle, internal injuries, a burn on his chest, and brain damage. n163 Unfortunately, this was not the first, nor the last incident of police brutality and, absent videotaped footage, it probably would have been ignored .¶ Statistics reveal that there are disproportionate ly high rates of the use of excessive and deadly force by police against people of color. n164 Research has shown that a variety of factors contribute to the problem of police brutality, including racism and prejudice, unfettered police discretion, the infamous police "code of silence," inadequate discipli- [*672] nary measures by police departments and administrators, and the ineffectiveness of current remedies. n165 Drug use serves as a prime example of institutionalized and condoned racism - Black men are arrested on drug charges 13 times as often as white men even though white men are more likely to use and sell drugs. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf There is, of course, an official explanation for all of this: crime rates. This explanation has tremendous appeal— before you know the facts—for it is consistent with, and reinforces, dominant racial narratives about crime and criminality dating back to slavery. The truth, however, is that rates and patterns of drug crime do not explain the glaring racial disparities in our criminal justice system. People of all races use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates.10 If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than people of color.11 One study, for example, published in 2000 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students.12 That same survey revealed that nearly identical percentages of white and black high school seniors use marijuana. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported in 2000 that white youth aged 12—17 are more than a third more likely to have sold illegal drugs than African American youth.13 Thus the very same year Human Rights Watch was reporting that African Americans were being arrested and imprisoned at unprecedented rates , government data revealed that blacks were no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes than whites and that white youth were actually the most likely of any racial or ethnic group to be guilty of illegal drug possession and sales. Any notion that drug use among blacks is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data; white youth have about three times the number of drug-related emergency room visits as their African American counterparts .14 The notion that whites comprise the vast majority of drug users and dealers—and may well be more likely than other racial groups to commit drug crimes—may seem implausible to some, given the media imagery we are fed on a daily basis and the racial composition of our prisons and jails. Upon reflection, however, the prevalence of white drug crime—including drug dealing—should not be surprising. After all, where do whites get their illegal drugs? Do they all drive to the ghetto to purchase them from somebody standing on a street corner? No. Studies consistently indicate that drug markets , like American society generally, reflect our nation's racial and socioeconomic boundaries. Whites tend to sell to whites; blacks to blacks.15 University students tend to sell to each other.16 Rural whites, for their part, don't make a special trip to the 'hood to purchase marijuana. They buy it from somebody down the road.17 White high school students typically buy drugs from white classmates, friends, or older relatives. Even Barry McCaffrey, former director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, once remarked, if your child bought drugs, "it was from a student of their own race generally."18 The notion that most illegal drug use and sales happens in the ghetto is pure fiction. Drug trafficking occurs there, but it occurs everywhere else in America as well. Nevertheless, black men have been admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is more than thirteen times higher than white men.19 The racial bias inherent in the drug war is a major reason that 1 in every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men.20 For young black men, the statistics are even worse. One in 9 black men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five was behind bars in 2006 , and far more were under some form of penal control—such as probation or parole.21 These gross racial disparities simply cannot be explained by rates of illegal drug activity among African Americans. The criminal justice system serves as a gateway into the larger system of institutionalized racism and mass incarceration that permanently marks people of color as members of America’s under caste. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf It may be helpful, in attempting to understand the basic nature of the new caste system, to think of the criminal justice system —the entire collection of institutions and practices that comprise it— not as an independent system but rather as a gateway into a much larger system of racial stigmatization and permanent marginalization.