In Chapter 5 Alexander talks about “invisible punishment” (first coined by author Jeremy Travis). This system of exclusion is the primary obstacle to reintegration. By making it impossible for offenders to re-entry many normal cycles of society, we in a sense create a population whose only home is prison.

Speaking of recent harsher Congress enactments Travis says-“Under these new laws, offenders can be denied public housing, welfare benefits, the mobility necessary to access jobs that require driving, child support, parental rights, the ability to obtain an education, and, in the case of deportation, access to the opportunities that brought immigrants to this country” (Travis 18). Just reading a sentence like that does not have the full impact of its content’s effects. In his essay Travis talks in numbers, which I found useful. We’ve talked about the disenfranchisement of offenders a couple times, but Travis puts it in terms that make sense – “One such calculation found that million Americans are now disqualified from voting” (Travis 35). The point of all this is to outline the path we are shaping for criminals in this country, to see what the effect of current mass incarceration system. Tallying these things emphasizes to me even more that we are boxing criminals in on all sides, and forcing them to stay where they are. The government creates harsh laws, lasting consequences, and has taken away the very same population’s voice. Even if we weren’t to change the criminal laws, we can clearly see that Travis is right, the mass incarceration system results in exclusion. At the very least we can agree that this is not productive, but detrimental to the entire population. The other reason Travis wrote his essay is to shed light on the invisible. In follow up to his concrete numbers about convict  disenfranchisement he talks about impossibility of calculating other important numbers to help us evaluate the impact of invisible criminal law: “But what about the impact of the statutes that disqualify criminals from education loans, public housing, welfare benefits, or parental rights? Counting the number of individuals punished through these laws approaches impossibility. The agencies that administer these sanctions are far-flung, have little or no connection with the criminal justice system, mayor may not keep records of their decisions, and have no incentive to report on these low-priority exercises of discretion” (Travis 26). Without these numbers its hard to research and compile data that would help bring change.