The Cruel Hand Analysis

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Michelle Alexander takes the title for this chapter “The Cruel Hand” from a speech by Frederick Douglass in “cruel hand” written in 1853. It still exists to keep criminals down and allow Americans to hate them. When a person gets out of jail, he often knows very little about the world he will step into. Their debt will never truly be paid and he seems to never really be free. They cannot buy a gun, obtain security clearance, or vote, the person likely cannot obtain federally funded health and welfare benefits, food stamps, public housing, or federal education assistance. This person may have his or her license suspended. All of these things assure that the person who has served time will never be able to enter the mainstream lifestyle. The first issue is housing, if people have no one to stay with or even …show more content…
In addition, if a person does not have a car it makes getting a job even more difficult because you have to stay close to your home area. The stigma of having a criminal record also has a profound impact, almost one third of young black men in this country are out of work, much of this due to criminal records and pasts. There have been campaigns to take away the question of criminal hitory on employment applications, but some scholars claim this may be deleterious because employers can just use other “popular but misguided proxies for criminality” (152) such as public assistance, public housing, and poor education. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did issue guidelines in 1987 saying that employers cannot bar one of employment and could only discriminate against applicants with criminal histories if they were looking at the nature and gravity of the offense, the length of time passed since the conviction, and the nature of the job. These guidelines do not have the force of law but judges often use them in their