Mass Incarceration

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• SOURCE: The Marshall Project
  5/14/2021
  

  I Survived Prison During The AIDS Epidemic. Here’s What It Taught Me About Coronavirus

  by Richard Rivera

  Like the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, imprisoned people at risk of COVID-19 find that suspicion, paranoia and isolation have taken the place of meaningful support. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  1/28/2021
  

  UCLA Wins $3.65-Million Grant to Build ‘Age of Mass Incarceration’ Archive with LAPD Records

  In addition to 177 boxes of LAPD records, which the university fought for and won access to in court, the project will seek out and include oral histories and other ephemera from community members who were affected by the region’s aggressive criminal justice pipelines, said professor Kelly Lytle Hernández.

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• SOURCE: ROAR
  1/23/2021
  

  Anything is Possible: Toward an Abolitionist Vision

  by Marc Lamont Hill

  Abolitionism is about more than dismantling prisons. It is also about building a world with universal access to safety, self-determination, freedom and dignity.

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• SOURCE: The Metropole
  1/4/2021
  

  Disciplining The City: Scholarship And The Carceral State Year In Review 2020

  Charlotte Rosen and Matthew Guariglia compile 2020's most essential works of scholarship on the nexus of urbanization, racism, policing, and mass incarceration. 

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  12/15/2020
  

  UM Fires History Professor Who Criticizes ‘Powerful, Racist Donors’ And ‘Carceral State’

  University of Mississippi historian Garrett Felber was notified that his tenure-track position will be terminated in one year. His research addressed the politics of racism and mass incarceration and connected to activism on behalf of incarcerated people. Colleagues suspect that donors to the university pushed for his termination. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/15/2020
  

  Abolition is Not Complete

  by Eric Foner

  The exception included in the 13th Amendment allowing involuntary labor on conviction of a crime was a holdover from prior laws; its authors certainly never intended to enable a system of prison labor, and the amendment should be amended. 

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• SOURCE: Skipped History
  11/3/2020
  

  Do Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Issues with his Father Help Explain Mass Incarceration?

  by Ben Tumin

  Ben Tumin's "Skipped History" video series tackles the legacy of the Moynihan Report through the work of historians Elizabeth Hinton and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. 

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• SOURCE: The Hill
  12/2/2020
  

  Democrats Introduce Legislation to Strike Slavery Exception in 13th Amendment

  The proposal would eliminate a loophole written into the 13th Amendment that allows involuntary servitude to be imposed on persons convicted of a crime. Some recent scholars have argued that this exemption is a foundation of the current system of mass incarceration. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  11/17/2020
  

  Online Book Talk with Author Garrett Felber on The Nation of Islam and Mass Incercaration (11/20)

  Garrett Felber's book takes a new look at the Nation of Islam and reveals a multifaceted freedom struggle that focused as much on policing and prisons as on school desegregation and voting rights.

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  11/17/2020
  

  I Don't Have to Forgive Joe Biden

  by Christopher Lebron

  "I choose to believe he is ready to be transformed by the times, his peers, and the mandate given to him in defeating good ol’ white supremacy. I can accept Biden for the purpose of dealing with him for the moment."

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• SOURCE: Places Journal
  10/15/2020
  

  “Nothing Stirred in the Air”

  by Stephen Dillon

  The architecture of the "supermax" prison targets the senses and emotions of the incarcerated as a means of control in the wake of political organizing inside and outside of prisons in the 1960s and 1970s. 

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• SOURCE: JSTOR Daily
  9/28/2020
  

  How Mass Incarceration Has Shaped History

  Political forces pushing for mass incarceration have been closely connected to those restricting the power of labor and pressing to keep wages low. 

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• SOURCE: The Marshall Project
  7/29/2020
  

  Will The Reckoning Over Racist Names Include These Prisons?

  Historians including Robert Perkinson and Monica Muñoz Martinez discuss the impact of having today's cruelly punitive prisons named for racist figures of the Jim Crow era.

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• SOURCE: Vox
  6/2/2020
  

  How Today’s Protests Compare to 1968, Explained by a Historian

  The Pulitzer Prize winning historian and President of the Urban History Association: "If there’s nothing else I’d love for your readership to think of, it’s this: If you have 75+ cities burning, what does it say that from the leadership at every level, the only response has been more police?"

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  5/29/2020
  

  The Minneapolis Uprising in Context

  by Elizabeth Hinton

  It's necessary to understand anti-police rebellion as a form of political protest among people without the resources to express discontent in more socially accepted ways. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  4/16/2020
  

  “Prisons Are Microcosms of the Broader Society”: An Interview with Heather Ann Thompson

  "The COVID-19 outbreak is essentially a reaping of what we’ve sown with mass incarceration, from a public health perspective."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/16/2020
  

  An Epicenter of the Pandemic Will Be Jails and Prisons, if Inaction Continues

  by Amanda Klonsky

  How will we prevent incarcerated people and those who work in these institutions from becoming ill and spreading the virus?

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• 1/26/20
  

  “Who’s Responsible For What’s Happening at Parchman?": A Historical Analysis of Mississippi’s Prisons

  by Michael Murphy

  These recent deaths at Parchman have a long historical tradition in Mississippi state-run institutions and are linked to underfunding and lack of support by the state government.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  1/17/20
  

  The Injustice of This Moment Is Not an ‘Aberration’

  by Michelle Alexander

  From mass incarceration to mass deportation, our nation remains in deep denial.

• 
• SOURCE: LA Review of Books
  12/13/19
  

  A New Kind of Bondage

  by Jason S. Sexton

  TONY PLATT’S Beyond These Walls provides a relentless critique of the United States’s carceral regime, prompting us to rethink how criminal justice institutions operate.