James Kilgore’s instructional breakdown about mass incarceration in America preaches to the choir. That being said, doesn’t every choir need a strong melody and a conductor who knows what he or she is doing?
Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time (2015) is a well-organized analysis of the far-reaching aspects of U.S. criminal justice policies.
The book examines lock-up policies, root causes of mass incarceration, gender biases in laws and those who profit off prisons. It also offers solutions.
Kilgore looks at key indicators that contribute to mass incarceration such as prison and jail expansion, deportation of immigrants, punitive school discipline, harsh sentencing laws, the use of solitary confinement and juveniles sentenced to life without parole.
There is an assumption in the U.S. that it’s fair to lock up criminals as long as they’re given treatment and education while incarcerated. Therefore, shouldn’t those leaving prisons reflect this rehabilitation policy? High recidivism rates show either this assumption is not true or that incarcerated Americans are not getting the services they need.
On the other hand, Michelle Alexander argues in her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness that treating criminal behavior more compassionately might yield better results.
“We could seek for them the same opportunities we seek for our own children; we could treat them like one of ‘us.’ We could do that,” Alexander writes.
Marie Gottschalk, author of The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (2006) said The New Jim Crow was one of the “most interesting original books” she’d ever read. “It thoroughly explains the consequence of today’s mass incarceration policies and the lasting effects of being labeled a felon.”
The Prison and the Gallows examines long-term crime rates and finds no direct relationship to incarceration rates, noting, “Deviance is not a property inherent in any particular kind of behavior, rather, deviance is a property conferred upon a certain behavior by the majority or by the powerful.”
Angela Davis addresses how Americans think about prisons in her 2003 book, Are Prisons Obsolete? “We take prisons for granted but are often afraid to face the realities they produce,” she writes.
When California courts began to investigate people in segregated housing units, “they found it wasn’t inherently cruel or unusual; but it was devastating for (individuals) suffering from mental illness to be put in solitary—they became the ‘walking dead,’” author of Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and The Future of Prisons in America (2014), Jonathan Simon said in an interview with The Crime Report.
Kilgore prods at the ethical dilemma of hyper-lockup policies by citing a May 2014 New York Times editorial.
“The American experiment in mass incarceration has been a moral, legal, social and economic disaster. It cannot end soon enough,” the editorial states.
The effort Kilgore puts into Understanding Mass Incarceration shouldn’t be taken for granted. It’s useful information every concerned citizen needs to have in order to talk about and understand the future of public safety in America.
Juan’s Book Review
