‘New Jim Crow’ discussion to explore race and the criminal justice system

After Michelle Alexander served as director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, she saw the criminal justice system in the United States, not as another institution merely affected by racial bias, but, in her words, “a different beast entirely.”

The Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Commission and the Palm Beach County Library System are hosting a book discussion that is free and open to the public on Wednesday, July 24 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. to discuss Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness at the Lantana Road Branch of the Palm Beach County Library System, 4020 Lantana Road, in Lake Worth.

“I came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and welldisguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow,” Alexander wrote in the book. The term “Jim Crow,” refers to laws that upheld and enforced racial segregation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through 1965, mostly in southern, former Confederate states.

The book is available from the county library and can be reserved online or picked up at a local branch. Discussions will involve the public and a panel facilitated by the Criminal Justice Commission.

The event is open to anyone but is geared toward “people who are curious about criminal justice and those who already have opinions on the system,” according to a statement from the Criminal Justice Commission.

This New York Times best seller is an account of “the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African-Americans being locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status,” according to the author.

This program is part of the county library’s series, Informed and Engaged: Criminal Justice, from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge. The programs “provide special insight into criminal justice using books, movies and statistical analysis to help participants understand the many intricate nuances of criminal justice,” according to the foundation.

Visit PBCLibrary.org or call 561-304-4500.