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Downsizing prisons : how to reduce crime and end mass incarceration
Over two million people are incarcerated in America's prisons and jails, eight times as many since 1975. Mandatory minimum sentencing, parole agencies intent on sending people back to prison, three-strike laws, for-profit prisons, and other changes in the legal system have contributed to this spectacular rise of the general prison population. After overseeing the largest city jail system in the country, Michael Jacobson knows first-hand the inner workings of the corrections system. In Downsizing Prisons, he convincingly argues that mass incarceration will not, as many have claimed, reduce crime nor create more public safety. Simply put, throwing away the key is not the answer.
Marked : race, crime, and finding work in an era of mass incarceration
Nearly every job application asks it: have you ever been convicted of a crime? For the hundreds of thousands of young men leaving American prisons each year, their answer to that question may determine whether they can find work and begin rebuilding their lives. The product of an innovative field experiment, Marked gives us our first real glimpse into the tremendous difficulties facing ex-offenders in the job market. Devah Pager matched up pairs of young men, randomly assigned them criminal records, then sent them on hundreds of real job searches throughout the city of Milwaukee. Her applicants were attractive, articulate, and capable--yet ex-offenders received less than half the callbacks of the equally qualified applicants without criminal backgrounds. Young black men, meanwhile, paid a particularly high price: those with clean records fared no better in their job searches than white men just out of prison. Such shocking barriers to legitimate work, Pager contends, are an important reason that many ex-prisoners soon find themselves back in the realm of poverty, underground employment, and crime that led them to prison in the first place. "Using scholarly research, field research in Milwaukee, and graphics, [Pager] shows that ex-offenders, white or black, stand a very poor chance of getting a legitimate job. . . . Both informative and convincing."--Library Journal "Marked is that rare book: a penetrating text that rings with moral concern couched in vivid prose--and one of the most useful sociological studies in years."--Michael Eric Dyson
Imprisoning communities : how mass incarceration makes disadvantaged neighborhoods worse
At no time in history, and certainly in no other democratic society, have prisons been filled so quickly and to such capacity than in the United States. And nowhere has this growth been more concentrated than in the disadvantaged--and primarily minority--neighborhoods of America's largesturban cities. In the most impoverished places, as much as 20% of the adult men are locked up on any given day, and there is hardly a family without a father, son, brother, or uncle who has not been behind bars.While the effects of going to and returning home from prison are well-documented, little attention has been paid to the impact of removal on neighborhoods where large numbers of individuals have been imprisoned. In the first detailed, empirical exploration of the effects of mass incarceration onpoor places, Imprisoning Communities demonstrates that in high doses incarceration contributes to the very social problems it is intended to solve: it breaks up family and social networks; deprives siblings, spouses, and parents of emotional and financial support; and threatens the economic andpolitical infrastructure of already struggling neighborhoods. Especially at risk are children who, research shows, are more likely to commit a crime if a father or brother has been to prison. Clear makes the counterintuitive point that when incarceration concentrates at high levels, crime rates willgo up. Removal, in other words, has exactly the opposite of its intended effect: it destabilizes the community, thus further reducing public safety.Demonstrating that the current incarceration policy in urban America does more harm than good, from increasing crime to widening racial disparities and diminished life chances for youths, Todd Clear argues that we cannot overcome the problem of mass incarceration concentrated in poor places withoutincorporating an idea of community justice into our failing correctional and criminal justice systems.
Race, Incarceration, and American Values
Why stigmatizing and confining a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to all Americans. The United States, home to five percent of the world's population, now houses twenty-five percent of the world's prison inmates. Our incarceration rate--at 714 per 100,000 residents and rising--is almost forty percent greater than our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). More pointedly, it is 6.2 times the Canadian rate and 12.3 times the rate in Japan. Economist Glenn Loury argues that this extraordinary mass incarceration is not a response to rising crime rates or a proud success of social policy. Instead, it is the product of a generation-old collective decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Whatever the explanation, Loury argues, the uncontroversial fact is that changes in our criminal justice system since the 1970s have created a nether class of Americans--vastly disproportionately black and brown--with severely restricted rights and life chances. Moreover, conservatives and liberals agree that the growth in our prison population has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Stigmatizing and confining of a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to Americans. Loury's call to action makes all of us now responsible for ensuring that the policy changes.
Pettit, B., & Gutierrez, C. (2018). Mass Incarceration and Racial Inequality. American Journal of Economics & Sociology, 77(3/4), 1153–1182. https://doi-org.sdcity.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/ajes.12241
Gross, K. N. (2015). African American Women, Mass Incarceration, and the Politics of Protection. Journal of American History, 102(1), 25–33
Pettit, B., & Sykes, B. L. (2015). Civil Rights Legislation and Legalized Exclusion: Mass Incarceration and the Masking of Inequality. Sociological Forum, 30, 589–611. https://doi-org.sdcity.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/socf.12179
Cox, R. (2018). Mass Incarceration, Racial Disparities in Health, and Successful Aging. Generations, 42(2), 48–55
Jay, M. (2019). From Mass Incarceration to Mass Coercion. Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, 71(7), 24. https://doi-org.sdcity.idm.oclc.org/10.14452/MR-071-07-2019-11_2
Desai, S. R., & Abeita, A. (2017). Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration: A Young Black Male’s Journey from Probation to Self-Advocacy. Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research, 13, 45–52.
Perry, E. L. (2016). Teaching History in the Age of Black Lives Matter: Embracing the Narratives of the Long Struggle for Civil Rights. American Journalism, 33(4), 465–470. https://doi-org.sdcity.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/08821127.2016.1238717
Reed, W. (2016, October 20). Prisons: The New Plantations. Washington Informer, 52(1), 15–52.
Hunter, M. (2016). Colorism in the Classroom: How Skin Tone Stratifies African American and Latina/o Students. Theory Into Practice, 55(1), 54–61. https://doi-org.sdcity.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/00405841.2016.1119019
Films Media Group. (2018). TEDTalks: Eve Abrams—The Human Stories Behind Mass Incarceration. Films on Demand.https://fod-infobase-com.sdcity.idm.oclc.org/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=160718&tScript=0
Films Media Group. (2019). True justice: Bryan Stevenson's fight for equality. Films On Demand. https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=97701&xtid=189943.
