The United States has the largest prison and prison population in the world not only in terms of population, but also in terms of numbers. Many of these offenders are behind bars for non-violent drug crimes and statistically the majority of these non-violent offenders are African American. African Americans represent 13% of the U.S. population, but make up more than 40% of the current jail and prison population. In the United States, a black man is five times more likely to be convicted of a crime than a white man. How far have we really come with respect to Jim Crow laws? During the Jim Crow era African Americans in some states were treated as second-class citizens in every aspect of life, from how they interacted with white Americans to not having the right to vote. Many people would say that we, as a nation, are long gone from those times, but many African Americans convicted of nonviolent drug crimes lose the right to vote, lose employment opportunities, and lose any social welfare programs that would otherwise be granted to them for their work. economic situation. The simple argument here is that a white man convicted of the same crime would also lose these rights, however, because African Americans are locked up much more than non-African Americans. As a country we must ask ourselves: Has race played a role in the high incarceration of African Americans, and can we compare it to the era of Jim Crow laws? My original topic focused solely on the Jim Crow-era criminal justice system and excluded any modern references or articles, but as more and more websites began citing the “new Jim Crow laws,” I was naturally interested. Once I started researching the “new Jim Crow laws,” they caught my attention. I initially found it hard to believe that current laws could be...... middle of paper ...... or this criminal justice system where kids are much more likely to drop out of school, experiment with recreational substances, and sadly end up in the justice system just like their parents. This cycle may be part of the reason why African Americans are poorer nationally than Caucasians. This cycle really started with slavery and then Jim Crow laws, African Americans were oppressed and treated as less, so they never had a chance to start on the same level. as white. We personally have family members who lived in a time where it was common for an African American man to be lynched, tortured, and killed simply for looking at a white girl the wrong way. We as a culture often forget how recent all this was and that many social institutions have not fully adapted. One of these institutions is our criminal justice system which is not as color blind as it claims to be.