Page 46 - Middle Georgia State University - Knighted 2019

name.” (89). Alex Lichtenstein refers to the reformed penal system in southern states as a
form of “racial dominance” and a means to further exploit African Americans (“Flocatex”
114). Inmates in the convict-lease system were considered “slaves of the state” (Alexander
31). And much like Lichtenstein, Michelle Alexander describes the criminal justice system of
the Reconstruction era as a means to repress African-Americans (32).

With the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, giving black men the right to vote, Black
Codes and convict-leasing served the secondary purpose of maintaining “political threats
posed by a free black population.” (Raza 166). Although felon disenfranchisement had
existed before the Civil War, it was rarely implemented. But during Reconstruction, due to
restrictive Black Codes, disenfranchisement of African-Americans became a common
practice as convictions for petty crimes were increased (Powell 387). Lauren Powell refers to
these conviction increases as a means for “Whites to disenfranchise Blacks in response to the
new social and political power they gained under the Reconstruction Amendments” (387).
Black Codes enabled white Americans in the South to maintain the social and political order
they were accustomed to without overtly defying the Constitution of the United States.

Beginning in the late 1970s, the United States replaced convict-leasing with the
prison-industrial complex. Raza describes the prison-industrial complex “as an economic
system,” in which “both the State and private corporations [are] working in collaboration to
profit by imprisonment.” (167).

The rise of the prison-industrial complex can be traced back to the “War on Drugs”
starting in the 1970s under President Nixon’s administration, and escalating under Ronald
Raegan’s presidency (Ingles 229). Both Ingles and Alexander refer to the “War on Drugs” as
an attack on the black community (Ingles 229), (Alexander 48). This racial targeting can be

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