New Underground Railroad Movement Questionnaire
“We must discuss and debate how the system of mass incarceration actually works (as opposed to how it is advertised) so that our discussions about how best to respond can be grounded in fact, not popular myth. We must be willing to search for the truth – and admit the truth – about ourselves, our own biases, stereotypes and misconceptions and the ways in which we might actually be part of the problem. If we muster the courage to face the truth about ourselves, our history, and our present, we have reason to hope for a radically better future.” – “The New Jim Crow Study Guide and Call to Action”
This questionnaire allows you as a reader to address yourself and your perspectives – biases, misconceptions, stereotypes – on mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex and face the truth about what role you are playing in the institutionalization of mass incarceration.
True or False: There are more people incarcerated in America today than there were in South Africa at the height of apartheid?
Statistics show which crimes to be more damaging to society as a whole: property crime committed by the poor or white collar crime committed by the rich?
Seventy percent of all crimes in America are committed by which group?
Since the 1980s, what is the ratio of prisons to colleges California has built?
Approximately how much or what percent of labor and goods of the GDP in America comes from prison manufactured goods?
Should employers and housing officials ever have the right to discriminate against people with criminal records?
Did you know that the U.S. military dictates that contracts for cheap labor be sought in prisons first before society?
What impact has this tentacle of the prison industrial complex had on the free labor market in communities?
In order to finance World War II, Hitler insured soldiers, then insured prisoners and created reasons and laws to incarcerate as many people as he could; today the U.S. has adopted Hitler’s pattern of bonding and insuring prisoners and locking up more people than any other country in the world. How is criminal justice being served by trading prisoners’ bonds and selling them as mutual funds on the stock market?
The national statistic is that three out of five African American men are in prison, on their way to prison or have been to prison. What does that reveal about the makeup of society when a statistic predicts sending citizens to prisons?
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