Jonathan's master's thesis is focused on the following research question:
In the Post-Civil Rights era, how did the police enforcement of the Federal justice system’s drug laws adapt, evolve, or mutate the forms of racial oppression that were characteristic of the Jim Crow era?
Jonathan's research focuses on the policing component of the carceral state within a periodization ranging from 1968 through 2000, covering the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton. This research particularly inquires into the changes in the federal justice system— both legislative and jurisprudential—as they relate to policing practices pertaining to the enforcement of drug laws.
This research also analyzes if and how-in the post-Civil Rights era-the Jim Crow system was transformed to account for the changing racial awareness of the American populace.
The research will also engage with the emerging concept of racial caste by seeking to determine how policing practices of black communities and black bodies lends to or detracts from the theory that a racial caste system exists in the United States.
