Racial Tracking, Mass Incarceration, and Color-Blind Racial Ideology: An Examination of Reform Efforts and their Implications on Today’s Racial Justice Problem

Abstract

In Building the Prison State, Heather Schoenfeld says “To understand how we got to where we are today, we need to understand past policy choices and practices…Our present systems of punishment and their relationship to society, politics, and the economy are predicated on past politics, past policy choices, and past institutional structures.” This thesis explores policy choices and practices in the criminal justice field from the past to better understand how Justice Reinvestment became the dominant strategy to topple mass incarceration nationwide. In this thesis, I explore the origins of racial disparities and tracking in the criminal justice system and how state and federal governments were able to build carceral capacity. After examining the literature, this thesis uses the implementation of Louisiana’s Justice Reinvestment Initiative (started in 2015) as a case study to illustrate that although this era can be characterized by reform, these reforms are based on carceral ethos of previous era and are not as bold and forward thinking as they assert themselves to be. In other words, the case of Louisiana reveals some of the complexities and inconsistencies in pursuing these sorts of reforms. Ultimately, this thesis asserts that the emergence of Justice Reinvestment is a manifestation of the interest-convergence theorem. Although some may argue that activists should use the interest-convergence to their advantage, I assert that this appeal causes the movement to lose its moral thrust. True racial progress cannot be achieved unless the racial project of color-blindness is eliminated.