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Dismantling Mass Incarceration
A vital reader on ending mass incarceration featuring advocates, experts, and formerly incarcerated people.
In recent years, a searching national conversation has called attention to the social and racial injustices that define America’s criminal system. The incarceration of vast numbers of people, and the punitive treatment of African Americans in particular, are targets of widespread criticism. But despite the election of progressive prosecutors in several cities and the passage of reform legislation at the local, state, and federal levels, the system remains very much intact. How can the damage and depredations of the carceral state be undone?
In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates ―Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo―provide us with tools to move from despair and critique to hope and action. Dismantling Mass Incarceration surveys new approaches to confronting the carceral state in all its guises, exploring ways that police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, prisons, and even life after prison can be radically reconceived. The book captures debates about the comparative merits of reforming or abolishing prisons and police forces, and introduces a host of bold but practical interventions. The contributors range from noted figures such as Angela Davis, Clint Smith, and Larry Krasner to local organizers, judges, and people currently or formerly incarcerated. The result is an invaluable guide for students, activists, and anyone who wishes to understand mass incarceration―and hasten its end.
In recent years, a searching national conversation has called attention to the social and racial injustices that define America’s criminal system. The incarceration of vast numbers of people, and the punitive treatment of African Americans in particular, are targets of widespread criticism. But despite the election of progressive prosecutors in several cities and the passage of reform legislation at the local, state, and federal levels, the system remains very much intact. How can the damage and depredations of the carceral state be undone?
In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates ―Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo―provide us with tools to move from despair and critique to hope and action. Dismantling Mass Incarceration surveys new approaches to confronting the carceral state in all its guises, exploring ways that police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, prisons, and even life after prison can be radically reconceived. The book captures debates about the comparative merits of reforming or abolishing prisons and police forces, and introduces a host of bold but practical interventions. The contributors range from noted figures such as Angela Davis, Clint Smith, and Larry Krasner to local organizers, judges, and people currently or formerly incarcerated. The result is an invaluable guide for students, activists, and anyone who wishes to understand mass incarceration―and hasten its end.
496 pages, Paperback
Published July 9, 2024
48 people are currently reading
908 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 2, 2024
Excellent collection of essays. I actually disagreed with quite a few of these. But they are as a whole thought provoking and well written. Representing a lot of different perspectives and interesting ideas about mass incarceration. Some of the more evenkeeled essays where genuinely paradigm shifting, and some of the more out there essays (no cops just vibes type stuff) really forced you to interact with them and think about what they had to say. Excellent stuff.
September 28, 2024
too much reform, not enough abolition
November 25, 2025
Late review but awesome anthology. Wish that I read it with a group.
July 1, 2024
Solid reader that serves as a great intro to understanding prison reform and abolition. Covering all roles in the justice system (police, judges, prosecutors, and public defenders) - the editors drew out why the answers are not as cut and dry as you would want them to be.
February 1, 2025
amazing. must read. a great anthology that has tons of diff perspectives and takes you thoroughly through the criminal justice system. i would not recommend this as a first read on the subject but I think after reading "The New Jim Crow" and "Chokehold" it was very easy to grasp.
April 19, 2025
This book was an excellent deep dive into everything you need to know about the American criminal system. What I appreciated the most was that it not only identified core issues but also provided practical solutions—many of which are being implemented in some parts of the country. I came away from it with a way better understanding of the system and a feeling that change is actually possible.
November 8, 2024
solid reader that i worked through much faster than i thought i would! of course not absolute and of course there is more to read but thought this was a really comprehensive approach that was compelling!
August 22, 2024
while not radical, the book offers a wealth of information on every step of abolition and personal experiences in the criminal injustice system
November 12, 2024
Read this & choose how you want to get involved. (Also deeply ironic the last part of the book focuses on the ways a criminal record blocks you from jobs, food stamps, college, housing yet if you’re a callous white man you get to take the highest office in the land)
A few quotes I appreciated:
- “Rather than thinking of abolition as just getting rid of police, I think about it as an invitation to create and support lots of different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most exciting, as an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place”
- “I think of homicide, not as a social or cultural problem, but as a material one—an absence of effective law. We can’t see law. We can’t touch it. And yet, when it works, it swaths us from birth to death in safety like a bulletproof shield. Just as widespread vaccination comes of well-developed public-health bureaucracies, freedom from personal violence comes of fully-realized state legitimacy, manifest in a functioning legal system. The safe take safety for granted.“
- “Certain structural factors consistently predict higher rates of homicide: larger and denser populations, geographic location in the South, a higher proportion of divorced males, and higher rates of poverty and income inequality…. If the United States is serious about addressing these high levels of concentrated violence then it has to be serious about addressing the country’s high levels of inequality and concentrated poverty.”
- “The system we should rebuild is one in which justice and mercy reinforce each other, in which success is measured by fortifying communities, not by putting people away in demand of an eye for an eye.”
- “Judges are likely to be criticized for sentencing too little, never too much; held responsible when someone they sentenced commits another crime, no matter what the cause, and not when someone they sentenced succeeds in reconstructing (or constructing) a good life. It results in a one-way ratchet”
- “The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers.”
- “it’s a good first principle for leftism: so long as there is injustice and suffering in the world, you should feel deeply troubled by it. It also does something extremely difficult: it empathizes with the despised, encouraging us to care about all of humanity, even those who have done horrendous and cruel things. It’s an exhortation to universal compassion: you have to care about everybody, without exceptions.”
A few quotes I appreciated:
- “Rather than thinking of abolition as just getting rid of police, I think about it as an invitation to create and support lots of different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most exciting, as an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place”
- “I think of homicide, not as a social or cultural problem, but as a material one—an absence of effective law. We can’t see law. We can’t touch it. And yet, when it works, it swaths us from birth to death in safety like a bulletproof shield. Just as widespread vaccination comes of well-developed public-health bureaucracies, freedom from personal violence comes of fully-realized state legitimacy, manifest in a functioning legal system. The safe take safety for granted.“
- “Certain structural factors consistently predict higher rates of homicide: larger and denser populations, geographic location in the South, a higher proportion of divorced males, and higher rates of poverty and income inequality…. If the United States is serious about addressing these high levels of concentrated violence then it has to be serious about addressing the country’s high levels of inequality and concentrated poverty.”
- “The system we should rebuild is one in which justice and mercy reinforce each other, in which success is measured by fortifying communities, not by putting people away in demand of an eye for an eye.”
- “Judges are likely to be criticized for sentencing too little, never too much; held responsible when someone they sentenced commits another crime, no matter what the cause, and not when someone they sentenced succeeds in reconstructing (or constructing) a good life. It results in a one-way ratchet”
- “The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers.”
- “it’s a good first principle for leftism: so long as there is injustice and suffering in the world, you should feel deeply troubled by it. It also does something extremely difficult: it empathizes with the despised, encouraging us to care about all of humanity, even those who have done horrendous and cruel things. It’s an exhortation to universal compassion: you have to care about everybody, without exceptions.”
August 31, 2024
This is an important book, not so much for providing new information as for consolidating in one place a comprehensive discussion of criminal justice in America today.
It's no secret that our criminal justice system is horribly broken at every level. It's unfair and discriminatory and serves mostly to funnel poor people of color into the prison system. We are indoctrinated with the idea that we need police, prosecutors and jails to keep us safe, deter people from criminal conduct and protect the innocent from the guilty, but the sad reality is that at every level the system fails to do any of these things. Maybe we can't abolish the police completely, but their role can be greatly reduced. Take them out of traffic enforcement, take them out of domestic abuse, and only let them carry guns in exceptional circumstances. And then there are the prosecutors. In most cases they are effectively judge and jury in addition to being prosecutors. Many cases should be taken out their hands completely and put into alternative justice systems. And for the cases that they do handle, they need to start from a position of no jail unless except as a last resort. Same for courts and judges. And then of course the jails and the post jail collateral consequences of a felony conviction are horrible and are the opposite of what we should be doing.
Foucault convinced me in "Discipline and Punish" that jails are primarily an expression of the modalities of power, a means of social control, and Angela Davis convinced me in "Are Prisons Obsolete" that it is possible to imagine a world without prisons. I have become more an abolitionist than a reformer. The whole broken system needs to be rethought from top to bottom.
It's no secret that our criminal justice system is horribly broken at every level. It's unfair and discriminatory and serves mostly to funnel poor people of color into the prison system. We are indoctrinated with the idea that we need police, prosecutors and jails to keep us safe, deter people from criminal conduct and protect the innocent from the guilty, but the sad reality is that at every level the system fails to do any of these things. Maybe we can't abolish the police completely, but their role can be greatly reduced. Take them out of traffic enforcement, take them out of domestic abuse, and only let them carry guns in exceptional circumstances. And then there are the prosecutors. In most cases they are effectively judge and jury in addition to being prosecutors. Many cases should be taken out their hands completely and put into alternative justice systems. And for the cases that they do handle, they need to start from a position of no jail unless except as a last resort. Same for courts and judges. And then of course the jails and the post jail collateral consequences of a felony conviction are horrible and are the opposite of what we should be doing.
Foucault convinced me in "Discipline and Punish" that jails are primarily an expression of the modalities of power, a means of social control, and Angela Davis convinced me in "Are Prisons Obsolete" that it is possible to imagine a world without prisons. I have become more an abolitionist than a reformer. The whole broken system needs to be rethought from top to bottom.
December 6, 2024
Increased awareness about social justice issues has spurred more interest and advocacy for addressing mass incarceration. Many books define the problem, particularly the racialized reality of policing, justice, and prison systems in the United States. However, they don’t do enough to offer possible solutions for the interwoven issues surrounding everyday choices and decisions that impact the lives of countless incarcerated individuals.
In "Dismantling Mass Incarceration," editors Premal Dharia, James Forman, Jr., and Maria Hamilo compile essays from distinguished thinkers, policymakers, legal experts, and activists about different parts of the complex mass incarceration “nonsystem:” police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, and prisons. Each is a part of disparate systems that are interrelated but mostly isolated from the other.
As a diversity educator focused on organizations, I bring knowledge of – but no direct experience in – the practices of law enforcement, legal, and prison systems. Notable contributors such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela J. Davis, and Charles Ogletree Jr., illuminate the complex, inequitable, and often inefficient dynamics that hinder justice. Dismantling Mass Incarceration encourages readers to consider various pragmatic perspectives from scholars and activists and to contemplate how they might contribute to solutions.
The editors urge readers to do what they can in their own community, to plug into the organizing that is already happening. This book, with its potential to inspire meaningful change, would serve as an excellent teaching tool for law students, social justice leaders, and others committed to social reform.
In "Dismantling Mass Incarceration," editors Premal Dharia, James Forman, Jr., and Maria Hamilo compile essays from distinguished thinkers, policymakers, legal experts, and activists about different parts of the complex mass incarceration “nonsystem:” police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, and prisons. Each is a part of disparate systems that are interrelated but mostly isolated from the other.
As a diversity educator focused on organizations, I bring knowledge of – but no direct experience in – the practices of law enforcement, legal, and prison systems. Notable contributors such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela J. Davis, and Charles Ogletree Jr., illuminate the complex, inequitable, and often inefficient dynamics that hinder justice. Dismantling Mass Incarceration encourages readers to consider various pragmatic perspectives from scholars and activists and to contemplate how they might contribute to solutions.
The editors urge readers to do what they can in their own community, to plug into the organizing that is already happening. This book, with its potential to inspire meaningful change, would serve as an excellent teaching tool for law students, social justice leaders, and others committed to social reform.
March 25, 2025
This was a truly eye-opening look into America's prison system. Three of my biggest takeaways:
1) The prison abolition movement may seem overly idealist, but in action, that looks like trying to remove the root causes of crime and inequality so that jails aren't needed. Even if the eventual goal is far away, we can take steps toward that reality. This does lead to a really complex philosophical/moral question tho imo—if everyone grew up healthy and well-adjusted, would people still commit crimes?
2) Prosecutors have soooo much discretion over which cases they press charges on, and reform-minded people in these positions can make a big difference.
3) Some of the biggest impacts of a criminal sentence actually manifest AFTER you leave jail. Many states make it legal for people with criminal charges to be denied housing, employment, SNAP benefits, ect. When courts consider the length of prison time, they should also weigh these impacts that might challenge the defendant's future. It's also a really valuable exercise for us to consider which, if any, other these limitations actually benefit public safety—especially if you think the ultimate goal of the criminal justice system is rehabilitation.
1) The prison abolition movement may seem overly idealist, but in action, that looks like trying to remove the root causes of crime and inequality so that jails aren't needed. Even if the eventual goal is far away, we can take steps toward that reality. This does lead to a really complex philosophical/moral question tho imo—if everyone grew up healthy and well-adjusted, would people still commit crimes?
2) Prosecutors have soooo much discretion over which cases they press charges on, and reform-minded people in these positions can make a big difference.
3) Some of the biggest impacts of a criminal sentence actually manifest AFTER you leave jail. Many states make it legal for people with criminal charges to be denied housing, employment, SNAP benefits, ect. When courts consider the length of prison time, they should also weigh these impacts that might challenge the defendant's future. It's also a really valuable exercise for us to consider which, if any, other these limitations actually benefit public safety—especially if you think the ultimate goal of the criminal justice system is rehabilitation.
April 22, 2025
This is one of the more impactful and necessary books I’ve read on the U.S. criminal justice system. This anthology brings together an impressive range of voices that is absolutely critical to the understanding of this kind of discussion and issue. (ie., sources include: activists, lawyers, scholars, and people directly impacted by incarceration)
This provides a multifaceted look at how the system functions and how one can begin to dismantle it, or understand the steps to dismantling the system, why it is important, and how systematic bias STILL affects America (Why do so many denounce this notion?) I appreciated that the author(s) do not stray from complexity: it holds space for both reformist and abolitionist perspectives, offering not just critiques but practical paths forward. Which is something MANY sources disregard in fields or topics beyond this one.
The text is also more accessible to individuals, which allows the media to be consumed at nearly any level while still providing new information or considerations for individuals who are familiar with the topic. Unlike a few other sources.
This provides a multifaceted look at how the system functions and how one can begin to dismantle it, or understand the steps to dismantling the system, why it is important, and how systematic bias STILL affects America (Why do so many denounce this notion?) I appreciated that the author(s) do not stray from complexity: it holds space for both reformist and abolitionist perspectives, offering not just critiques but practical paths forward. Which is something MANY sources disregard in fields or topics beyond this one.
The text is also more accessible to individuals, which allows the media to be consumed at nearly any level while still providing new information or considerations for individuals who are familiar with the topic. Unlike a few other sources.
August 20, 2025
Reading Dismantling Mass Incarceration was both engaging and a little frustrating for me. I appreciated how clearly it broke down the systemic harms of mass incarceration, especially the historical and political forces that created and sustain it. The book made these complex issues feel accessible, and I think it does a great job at helping readers understand just how unsustainable the current system is.
At the same time, I found myself wanting more. Despite the title, the book leaned heavily toward reformist strategies (e.g., shorter sentences, more diversion programs, restructuring certain policies) rather than abolitionist ones. For me, that was disappointing, because those solutions still operate within the carceral framework instead of imagining something entirely different.
Overall, I’d give it four stars because it’s a strong and necessary text for starting conversations and moving people past “tough on crime” thinking. But if you’re already coming from an abolitionist perspective, it feels more like an entry point than a transformative guide.
At the same time, I found myself wanting more. Despite the title, the book leaned heavily toward reformist strategies (e.g., shorter sentences, more diversion programs, restructuring certain policies) rather than abolitionist ones. For me, that was disappointing, because those solutions still operate within the carceral framework instead of imagining something entirely different.
Overall, I’d give it four stars because it’s a strong and necessary text for starting conversations and moving people past “tough on crime” thinking. But if you’re already coming from an abolitionist perspective, it feels more like an entry point than a transformative guide.
July 15, 2024
An absolute must read for anyone who cares about addressing the myriad issues with the criminal legal system and also has an open mind about what the problems are and how to address them. This wonderful book tackles the system from multiple angles, separating the chapters by the key players. But what I think separates this book from many others is that it presents different perspectives. Its aim isn’t to tell the reader what to think but to get reader to think. And to me, that is what makes this such a special book.
May 22, 2024
Thought-provoking and insightful.
A thorough introduction to the massive, multi-layered and complex issue of mass incarceration in the United States. I found the diversity of eloquent perspectives in this book to be welcome, useful and fascinating. Highly recommended. It would be great for a book group/group discussions/teaching material, etc. but is also accessible to anyone with a modicum of interest in the topic.
A thorough introduction to the massive, multi-layered and complex issue of mass incarceration in the United States. I found the diversity of eloquent perspectives in this book to be welcome, useful and fascinating. Highly recommended. It would be great for a book group/group discussions/teaching material, etc. but is also accessible to anyone with a modicum of interest in the topic.
March 7, 2025
really loved the setup of this book and the incorporation of so many authors/ viewpoints. it gave a really holistic view of reform at the level of each actor and pros/ cons to different reform efforts & goals. very eye-opening & very thought-provoking.
August 9, 2024
Explores how reform can happen in America's penal system at multiple levels (police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, in prisons, and after release). Pulls from interviews, essays, court rulings, and first-hand accounts.
November 6, 2024
This is less a handbook and more a series of articles written by other folks. Not at all a problem, and definitely important information, but not really a road map of any kind.
December 11, 2024
helpful to have the physical book to flip through
June 1, 2025
Such an important read and eye opening statistics that illuminate how our society needs to change
June 30, 2025
skimmed some sections, but read most of it.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews