Almost nine years ago, Michelle Alexander published one of the most important books of the twenty-first century. The New Jim Crow thrust the question of mass incarceration into the public sphere in a way no social movement had done in decades, arguably since the 1970s.

Alexander argued that the explosion in mass incarceration in general, and the mass incarceration of African Americans in particular, was not only the byproduct of a bipartisan consensus but a new form of mid-twentieth century racism. Her thesis resonated with the individual experiences of many — myself included.

As a young adult I remember Bill Clinton taking time off from his first presidential campaign to witness the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, an intellectually impaired black man; I remember when California passed its infamous “three strikes” legislation, clogging the jails for years to come; I remember the creation of the “super predator” myth and the equally apocryphal “crack baby.” More than one of my childhood friends spent time in prison. Almost every middle-aged black man I knew had had some sort of negative encounter with the police. Alexander’s book took hold because stories like mine seemed to scale up to account for the rise in mass incarceration and the proliferation of million-dollar blocks (city stretches where over $1 million was spent incarcerating its denizens).