The American state locks up its residents at jaw-dropping rates. Though home to less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States contains more than 20
 percent of the world’s prisoners.

Mass incarceration, as it’s come to be known, does not affect all groups equally. In 2010, white people were imprisoned at a rate of 450 per 100,000 while black people were locked up at a clip of 2,306 per 100,000. Simply put, black people are five times as likely as white people to be in jail or prison in the US.

There are two common explanations for this racial disparity in left-of-center thought. The first holds that mass incarceration exists primarily to control black people — a racist system that developed following the end of legal segregation and the successes of the Civil Rights Movement. Michelle Alexander lays out this view in her widely acclaimed book The New Jim Crow. The second account argues that mass incarceration exists primarily to manage the poor — a class-biased system that emerged as the welfare state was rolled back and neoliberal reforms took off. Cedric Johnson is one of the most prominent proponents of this view.