Description

BEYOND MASS INCARCERATION:
CRISIS AND CRITIQUE IN NORTH AMERICAN PENAL SYSTEMS
edited by Alessandro De Giorgi

After decades of vertical increases in imprisonment rates, the US carceral system is in a state of structural crisis. A growing public awareness of the spiraling social and economic costs of this hypertrophic carceral machine seems to provide a window of opportunity to challenge the American penal state. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of mass incarceration, or are the recent reform initiatives subtle ways to tinker with the system? What radical agendas for penal reform could emerge in the present conjuncture? Using an interdisciplinary lens, the essays featured in this special issue of Social Justice analyze the carceral field in the United States and Canada in an attempt to decode current trends and anticipate future developments.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editor’s Introduction [free pdf download]

Five Theses on Mass Incarceration
Alessandro De Giorgi

Razing the Carceral State
Marie Gottschalk

Injury and Accumulation: Making Sense of the Punishing State
Noah De Lissovoy

Assessing the Boundaries of ‘Public Criminology’: On the Pitfalls of Reformist, Elite-Oriented Engagement and Discipline Justification
Justin Piché

Advocacy and Academia: Considering Strategies of Cooperative Engagement
Abby Deshman & Kelly Hannah-Moffat

Policing Carceral Boundaries: Access to Information and Research with Prisoners
Dawn Moore, Lisa Wright & Vincent Kazmierski

Complicity and Redemption: The Boundaries of Scholarly Gazing
Shoshana Pollack & Tiina Eldridge

“Ripping Off Some Room for People to Breathe”: “Peer to Peer” Education in Prison
Simone Weil Davis & Bruce Michaels

Book Review Symposium: Jonathan Simon, Mass Incarceration on Trial
Contributors: Leonidas Cheliotis, Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Mona Lynch, Rebecca McLennan, Tony Platt & Jonathan Simon

Book Review: Hadar Aviram, Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment
Reviewed by Alessandro De Giorgi