Full Description
The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders, yet reforms to reduce the numbers of those incarcerated have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, an ever-widening carceral state has sprouted in the shadows, extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It sunders families and communities and reworks conceptions of democracy, rights, and citizenship--posing a formidable political and social challenge. In Caught, Marie Gottschalk examines why the carceral state remains so tenacious in the United States. She analyzes the shortcomings of the two dominant penal reform strategies--one focused on addressing racial disparities, the other on seeking bipartisan, race-neutral solutions centered on reentry, justice reinvestment, and reducing recidivism. With a new preface evaluating the effectiveness of recent proposals to reform mass incarceration, Caught offers a bracing appraisal of the politics of penal reform.
Contents
List of Figures xi List of Abbreviations xiii Preface to the Paperback Edition xv Chapter 1 Introduction The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics 1 Part I The Political Economy of Penal Reform 23 Chapter 2 Show Me the Money, The Great Recession and the Great Confinement 25 Chapter 3 Squaring the Political Circle, The New Political Economy of the Carceral State 48 Chapter 4 What Second Chance?, Reentry and Penal Reform 79 Chapter 5 Caught Again, Justice Reinvestment and Recidivism 98 Part II The Politics of Race and Penal Reform 117 Chapter 6 Is Mass Incarceration the "New Jim Crow"? Racial Disparities and the Carceral State 119 Chapter 7 What's Race Got to Do with It?, Bolstering and Challenging the Carceral State 139 Part III The Metastasizing Carceral State 163 Chapter 8 Split Verdict, The Non, Non, Nons and the "Worst of the Worst" 165 Chapter 9 The New Untouchables, The War on Sex Offenders 196 Chapter 10 Catch and Keep, The Criminalization of Immigrants 215 Chapter 11 The Prison beyond the Prison, The Carceral State and Growing Political and Economic Inequalities in the United States 241 Chapter 12 Bring It On, The Future of Penal Reform, the Carceral State, and American Politics 258 Acknowledgments 283 Notes 285 Select Bibliography 411 Index 439
