Taking Liberties: Prisons, Policing and Surveillance in an Age of Crisis

by Christian Parenti

The late 20th century will be remembered as an era of relentless U.S. aggression. Not least of which has been aimed at the domestic population in the form of a rapidly expanding "prison industrial complex" and the militarization of our various policing agencies. Christian Parenti takes an unflinching look at state repression and the impact and implications it has on our society. This collection of talks takes us from the social upheaval of the 60’s and 70’s, to the clampdown of Reagan’s 80’s, and brings us to our neoliberal age and the "Patriot Act."

Christian Parenti is the author of Lockdown America and a frequent contributor to The Progressive, The Nation and the Christian Science Monitor.

Audio CD

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Christian Parenti is a contributing editor at The Nation, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a visiting scholar at the City University of New York. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from the London School of Economics. The author of Lockdown America, The Soft Cage, and The Freedom. Parenti has written for Fortune, The New York Times, Los AngelesTimes, Washington Post, Playboy, Mother Jones, and The London Review of Books. He has held fellowships from the Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Brother Fund and the Ford Foundation; and has won numerous awards, including the 2009 Lange-Tailor Prize and “Best Magazine Writing 2008” from the Society for Professional Journalists. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.