The criminal justice system in the US targets certain groups, including people of color, people with mental illness, and low-income people, at disproportionately high rates.
Bail is essentially punishment for being poor and poverty and imprisonment function as a cycle.
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander argues that the War on Drugs was created to target Black folks, who also face higher rates of incarceration, police abuse, and death penalty use than whites unrelated to levels of lawbreaking, in what can be considered a historical continuation from slavery.
Native American people are also incarcerated and killed disproportionately, and Native children are taken from their families in alarmingly large numbers.
People with mental illness are often criminalized as well.
Violent crime is a political category.
