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States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform, and America’s Punishment System
A crucial book for our current moment, uncovering the history of mass incarceration in the United States and engaging with the major challenges of contemporary prison and police abolition activism.
Inspired by the George Floyd Rebellion, States of Incarceration examines the ongoing reconfiguration of mass incarceration as crucial for understanding how race, class, and punishment shape America today. The rise of mass incarceration has coincided with massive disinvestment in working-class communities, particularly communities of color, and a commitment to criminalize poverty, addiction, and interpersonal violence. As Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka Kurti argue, the present is a moment of transition and potential reform of incarceration and, by extension, the American justice system. States of Incarceration provides insights into the rise of mass incarceration and its recent history while focusing on the needs of campaigners struggling with the issues of police and prison abolition, as well as the challenges that lie ahead. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with these questions.
Inspired by the George Floyd Rebellion, States of Incarceration examines the ongoing reconfiguration of mass incarceration as crucial for understanding how race, class, and punishment shape America today. The rise of mass incarceration has coincided with massive disinvestment in working-class communities, particularly communities of color, and a commitment to criminalize poverty, addiction, and interpersonal violence. As Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka Kurti argue, the present is a moment of transition and potential reform of incarceration and, by extension, the American justice system. States of Incarceration provides insights into the rise of mass incarceration and its recent history while focusing on the needs of campaigners struggling with the issues of police and prison abolition, as well as the challenges that lie ahead. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with these questions.
- GenresNonfiction
240 pages, Hardcover
Published November 9, 2022
2 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Jarrod Shanahan
7 books9 followersJarrod Shanahan is a writer, activist, and educator based in Chicago. He works as an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Governors State University in University Park, Illinois, and is the coauthor of States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform, and the Future of America’s Punishment System; a co-editor of Treason to Whiteness Is Loyalty to Humanity, a Noel Ignatiev reader; and an editor of Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 12, 2022
It got buried because of the (deserved) outpouring of scorn for the Shemon Salam piece, but Jarrod Shanahan's essay in the Endnotes dossier on the George Floyd rebellion was one of the best things written on those months. As such, I was really looking forward to this book. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much meat--the first three chapters are capable syntheses of existing writing on the riots, the rise of mass incarceration, the relation of race and class etc. (the second chapter in particular stands out--wish I could have assigned it to my undergrads two years back), but the last two are less compelling. The fifth is the real disappointment--even as I broadly agree with the authors' sympathetic critique of abolitionism, too often does repeating axioms (e.g. "the real weapon is collective power") take the place of any real dialectical analysis of the contemporary terrain.
February 14, 2024
Worthwhile read for pretty much anyone left-of-liberal. Particularly helpful for those who don’t have direct experience with the radical edges of abolitionist movement work, but has enough meat on its bones to still interest those who do.
Chapter 1 is the highlight, and amounts to one of the best bylined analyses of the George Floyd Rebellion that I’ve yet to come across (Tobi Haslett’s “Magic Actions” being the other—I don’t think either is perfect, but I’m an admittedly harsh critic when it comes to this stuff). Chapter 2 gives strong political economic context for the modern US carceral state, but doesn’t really say anything that isn’t already in the literature, and falls a little flat in its attempt to integrate its racial analysis (“race is the modality through which class is lived” should be the opening of an inquiry, not its closure; I imagine Kurti + Shanahan would agree with this, but their work here doesn’t totally reflect that). Their arguments in the remaining chapters are little more well-worn and imprecise, but still largely correct + useful, even if only as reminders. Gets a little insider baseball-y in its gloss of the NYC abolitionist organizing scene, and I wonder if the critiques of DSA Emerge warrant as much pagespace as they receive, but as someone who watched a lot of the No New Jails stuff unfold firsthand I really do appreciate their elevation of the lessons from that (ongoing) struggle, which I think about a lot these days.
Chapter 1 is the highlight, and amounts to one of the best bylined analyses of the George Floyd Rebellion that I’ve yet to come across (Tobi Haslett’s “Magic Actions” being the other—I don’t think either is perfect, but I’m an admittedly harsh critic when it comes to this stuff). Chapter 2 gives strong political economic context for the modern US carceral state, but doesn’t really say anything that isn’t already in the literature, and falls a little flat in its attempt to integrate its racial analysis (“race is the modality through which class is lived” should be the opening of an inquiry, not its closure; I imagine Kurti + Shanahan would agree with this, but their work here doesn’t totally reflect that). Their arguments in the remaining chapters are little more well-worn and imprecise, but still largely correct + useful, even if only as reminders. Gets a little insider baseball-y in its gloss of the NYC abolitionist organizing scene, and I wonder if the critiques of DSA Emerge warrant as much pagespace as they receive, but as someone who watched a lot of the No New Jails stuff unfold firsthand I really do appreciate their elevation of the lessons from that (ongoing) struggle, which I think about a lot these days.
February 4, 2024
I think this book is the most in-depth account of the George Floyd rebellion that I have ever read. The writers make the compelling and well-researched claim that the rebellion was mainly directed against the carceral infrastructure and carceral state. The argument they are conducting is very eye-opening.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews