In recent years, optimistic illusions have developed about mass incarceration. The basis for this appeared sound. From 2009-2012, total prisoner numbers were down in the U.S. for the first time since the late 1970s, with figures for African Americans behind bars declining. Attorney General Eric Holder publicly supported employment access for felons and lighter sentences for those with drug offenses. The New York Times proclaimed, "The experiment in mass incarceration has been a moral, legal, social and economic disaster. It cannot end soon enough."  Some popular advocacy against mass incarceration appeared to make inroads into the criminal justice system.  However, this anti-mass incarceration optimism does not stand up to harsh reality.
The United States Bureau of Justice's annual statistical report (9/16/14) on national prison population revealed that incarceration numbers were up for the first time since 2009. The rise was 0.3%, but this miniscule upswing highlights the deep contradictions that were there all along. Fourteen states hit new record high prison populations in 2013; 31 states recorded an increase in prison admissions. The overall racial disproportionality remained with Black males of all ages six times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts and two and a half times more likely than Latinos.
In May 2013, months before the violence in Ferguson, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), an activist organization with chapters in seven states and Washington DC, released a report into "extrajudicial killings" of black people in the US. The report found that an African-American male is killed every 28 hours by US police or vigilantes with little or no accountability.  In 2012, a total of 313 blacks were killed in this way.
The MXGM report concluded that police forces are brought into black communities "with marching orders, equipment and the mentality of an occupying army." 
In an article in Counterpunch, "The Racial Crisis in American Society," Nafeez Ahmed interviewed Terron Sims, a West Point graduate, company commander during the 2003 Iraq war, Democratic Party activist and member of the establishment. Sims told Ahmed, "The shooting of Michael Brown … came about through a deepening culture of unaccountable racism…in Ferguson we're looking at years of police repression targeted largely at black people …Shootings of innocent black people in the US by cops is at an epidemic level." 
Sims, and the establishment in general, don't want to account for the increase in racist police terror, but communists know that racism doesn't just happen. It's pushed by the capitalists to maximize profits and to keep the working class divided.  The rulers' fear of workers, particularly black workers, means that while they try to grant a few concessions to win the loyalty of black workers, their main strategy is terrorizing the masses to prevent fightback. As the capitalist crisis deepens, they have less maneuvering room, and resort more and more to open terror.
Mass incarceration and police repression are elements of racist terror that capitalism needs to exist. Reform attempts such as relaxing drug laws and community policing will not change this. To end these horrors, we must mobilize the masses, particularly the young people in cities and neighborhoods under siege, into the International Communist Workers' Party to fight for Communist Revolution that will end the capitalist system and its racism.
Communist society will depend on the unity of all workers, regardless of ethnicity or "race," working together to serve the needs of all. By eliminating exploitation, class divisions and the wage system, we will create a world that eliminates racist practices and encourages sharp struggle against the remnants of racist ideas and behavior.