Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time

Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time

Language: English

Pages: 272

ISBN: 1620970678

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


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.

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services individual might require (e.g., substance abuse treatment or anger management therapy). Those with low risk might be given a diversion program not involving jail time but requiring them to participate in specific programs. Others with higher risk would be provided services during their time in jail, and those services would be continued and intensified upon release. Each person in this program would be assigned a case manager who would assist the individual with planning and link him or

BEHIND People who go to prison leave behind pieces of their lives—spouses, lovers, children, parents, other family members, friends, jobs, neighbors, businesses, property, accomplishments, and memories—a set of relationships with others in the communities from which they come. Because roughly 90 percent of prisoners are men, the vast majority of those left behind are women and children. Their experiences are seldom visible in our accounts of criminal justice. The experiences of the “other half”

institutions, those incarcerated in women’s prisons generally have low levels of education and lack economic security. A 2007 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey revealed that 38 percent of people in women’s prisons had no high school diploma or General Educational Development (GED) diploma upon admission. More than a third of mothers in prison reported receiving federal benefits such as food stamps or Temporary Aid to Needy Families before admission, while nearly 50 percent in state prison

came to $3.5 billion, nearly twice the cost of the actual construction.5 The opportunity to fund these prisons attracted some of the biggest names in finance, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, the late Bear Stearns, and Bank of America Securities. EMPLOYEES OF THE CORRECTIONS INDUSTRY Nationwide approximately 2.4 million people work in the justice system, about one per prisoner. At the financial apex are the CEOs of the large private corrections companies, with their multimillion-dollar

the money to buy a ticket to a concert. On the other hand, maybe John needed money to pay off a gambling debt or to buy medicine for a sick relative, which the family couldn’t afford. Restorative justice would take into account John’s circumstances and encourage a spirit of forgiveness on the part of Sally—if she feels John is indeed remorseful about his action. Moreover, if John had a genuine need for that twenty dollars, the discussion might also turn to other ways his need could be met without

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