Understanding mass incarceration : a people's guide to the key civil rights struggle of our time

Author

James William Kilgore

Call Number

• 365 K483 (CEN, OSH)

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Publication Information

New York : New Press, 2015.

Physical Description

264 pages : illustrations ; 17 cm

Summary

"We all know that orange is the new black and mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow, but how much do we actually know about the structure, goals, and impact of our criminal justice system? Understanding Mass Incarceration offers the first comprehensive overview of the incarceration apparatus put in place by the world's largest jailer: the United States. Drawing on a growing body of academic and professional work, Understanding Mass Incarceration describes in plain English the many competing theories of criminal justice--from rehabilitation to retribution, from restorative justice to justice reinvestment. In a lively and accessible style, author James Kilgore illuminates the difference between prisons and jails, probation and parole, laying out key concepts and policies such as the War on Drugs, broken windows policing, three-strikes sentencing, the school-to-prison pipeline, recidivism, and prison privatization. Informed by the crucial lenses of race and gender, he addresses issues typically omitted from the discussion: the rapidly increasing incarceration of women, Latinos, and transgender people; the growing imprisonment of immigrants; and the devastating impact of mass incarceration on communities. Both field guide and primer, Understanding Mass Incarceration will be an essential resource for those engaged in criminal justice activism as well as those new to the subject."--

Contents

• Part one: The basics of mass incarceration
• A snapshot of the system
• Building popular support for growing the prison system
• "Lock 'em up and throw away the key" : the rise of mass incarceration
• Part two: The many faces of "tough on crime"
• The war on drugs
• The war on immigrants
• The death of rehabilitation
• Jail : the local face of mass incarceration
• The school-to-prison pipeline
• Part three: The gendered threads of punishment
• The folks left behind
• Women's prisons
• Part four: Prison profiteers
• Private prisons
• Incarceration, Inc.
• Part five: Ending mass incarceration
• Changing the mind-set
• Organizing to end mass incarceration.