"Are we there yet?" She mumbled as she shifted her head in his lap, starting to rub the sleep out of her eyes as she stretched out her sore muscles.
"Two more hours," Trey said as he flipped the page, then moved his arm so that she could sit up. She took her Beats off of her head and tossed them to the side of her as she released a wide yawn.
"What are you reading?" Her voice was quiet since everyone else on the plane was either sleeping, listening to music, or rocking a cranky child.
"The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander," Trey answered, watching from the corner of his eye as she folded her legs underneath her.
"Is it good?"
"Yeah, it's interesting. I would offer to read it to you but we all know how you feel about reading," Trey joked, causing Demi to roll her eyes as she lightly smacked his arm. She took the book from him and let her eyes scan over the page before picking the most interesting paragraph and beginning to read.
Because harsh sentencing is the primary cause of the prison explosion, one might reasonably assume that substantially reducing the length of prison sentences would effectively dismantle this new system of control. That view, however, is mistaken. This system depends on the prison label, not prison time.
Once a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal, and privileges of citizenship such as voting and jury service are off-limits. It does not matter whether you have actually spent time in prison; your second-class citizenship begins the moment you are branded a felon. Most people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison. As of 2008, there were approximately 2.3 million people in prisons and jails, and a staggering 5.1 million people under "community correctional supervision"—i.e., on probation or parole. Merely reducing prison terms does not have a major impact on the majority of people in the system. It is the badge of inferiority—the felony record—that relegates people for their entire lives, to second-class status. As described in chapter 4, for drug felons, there is little hope of escape. Barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to "check the box" indicating a felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and denied licenses for a wide range of professions, people whose only crime is drug addiction or possession of a small amount of drugs for recreational use find themselves locked out of the mainstream society and economy—permanently.
Trey figured that she was just reading it for fun but as she delved into the middle of the second paragraph, he could tell that she was actually interested in it, which completely surprised him. They were complete opposites in the fact that Trey loved to read books while Demi preferred to watch documentaries and hated reading, which aggravated him to no end, but he couldn't force her to read just like she couldn't force him to watch police find dead bodies in ditches.
"Are you preparing for your trial?" Demi asked as she closed the book with her thumb on the page where she was reading.
"No, I just think it's interesting and a good thing to be educated on. I'm not worried about the trial and I told you not to worry about it either," Trey reminded her as she shifted her position so that she was resting her head on his chest.
"Trey, you can't tell me not to worry about the fact that you could be facing jail time because you don't want to accept a plea deal. Why do you want to go to trial so bad?" Demi whined, because she really didn't understand it. She had watched enough crime shows to know that if Trey just accepted a plea then this whole thing would be over. But no, he decided that he wanted to go to trial, and now they had video evidence of him saying "fuck the police" and the prosecution was arguing for it to be used in the case.
