Themes

People killed by police in the US The Guardian The Counted is a project by the Guardian – and you – working to count the number of people killed by police and other law enforcement agencies in the United States throughout 2015 and 2016, to monitor their demographics and to tell the stories of how… Read More »The Counted

Karin Shapiro Duke University Jackson Skeen Duke University Discipline(s): History, African & African American Studies Syllabus Last Updated: January, 2017 This independent study examines the convict labor system that emerged in the post-Civil War South. The student will explore the political and economic contexts in which convict leasing developed, analyze the demographics of those ensnared in… Read More »Convict Labor in the American South from the Civil War to the Great Depression

Dan Berger In this pathbreaking book, Dan Berger offers a bold reconsideration of twentieth century black activism, the prison system, and the origins of mass incarceration. Throughout the civil rights era, black activists thrust the prison into public view, turning prisoners into symbols of racial oppression while arguing that confinement was an inescapable part of… Read More »Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era

The Times-Picayune Jarvis DeBerry October 19, 2016 Article about inequality in the justice system More Information

Forged Images Production Cooperative Christine Bowditch January 1, 1998 Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary was built in the 1820s, inspired by Enlightenment ideas and Quaker belief in solitary reflection and penitence. This documentary, illustrated with period lithographs, engravings, and photographs, gives a detailed history of the prison from its initial practice of total solitary confinement through… Read More »Eastern State Penitentiary

Independent Lens (PBS) Eugene Jarecki April 8, 2013 For the past 40 years, the war on drugs has resulted in more than 45 million arrests, $1 trillion dollars in government spending, and America’s role as the world’s largest jailer. Yet for all that, drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available than ever. Filmed in more… Read More »The House I Live In

Criminal Podcast Daniel A Gross August 26, 2016 In November of 1988, Robin Woods was sentenced to sixteen years in the notoriously harsh Maryland Correctional Institution. In prison, Robin found himself using a dictionary to work his way through a book for the first time in his life. It was a Mario Puzo novel. While… Read More »Criminal Podcast Episode 49: The Editor

Matt Whitt Duke University Discipline(s): Composition, Philosophy, Political Science Syllabus Last Updated: September, 2015 A profound tension runs through the public culture of the United States. On the one hand, the U.S. declares itself to be a “land of liberty,” in which individual freedom is cherished and protected. On the other hand, the U.S. has… Read More »Liberty, Justice, and Imprisonment in the United States

Lori Gruen Wesleyan University, Philosophy Discipline(s): Philosophy Syllabus Last Updated: August, 2016 This is an advanced course taught through the Center for the Humanities for interdisciplinary/multi-disciplinary undergraduate students. This interdisciplinary course, grounded on philosophical reflections on hope, respect, and exclusion, will critically explore the ethical, social, and political issues raised by mass incarceration. We will be… Read More »Hope and Hopelessness in an Age of Mass Incarceration

Daniel LaChance Emory University Discipline(s): History Syllabus Last Updated: March, 2016 This class aims to help students understand the ideological, economic, and cultural sources of the punitive turn, the ratcheting up of incarceration and other forms of harsh punishment since the 1970s. It gives equal attention to the  popular representations and imaginings of punishment and the lived experience of… Read More »Crime and Punishment in American Culture: Power and Poetics

Dan Berger In this pathbreaking book, Dan Berger offers a bold reconsideration of twentieth century black activism, the prison system, and the origins of mass incarceration. Throughout the civil rights era, black activists thrust the prison into public view, turning prisoners into symbols of racial oppression while arguing that confinement was an inescapable part of… Read More »Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era

University of Chicago Michelle Alexander February 21, 2013 Michelle Alexander, highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, delivers the 30th Annual George E. Kent Lecture, in honor of the late George E. Kent, who… Read More »2013 George E. Kent Lecture

Jonathon Simon UC Berkeley, School of Law Discipline(s): Law Syllabus Last Updated: February, 2016 This class will examine aspects of the Carceral State in the US and state and policy solutions for shrinking it. simon criminal justice seminar 2016.February.17

University of Chicago press Daniel LaChance November 1, 2016 In the mid-1990s, as public trust in big government was near an all-time low, 80% of Americans told Gallup that they supported the death penalty. Why did people who didn’t trust government to regulate the economy or provide daily services nonetheless believe that it should have… Read More »Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States

the American Film Institute, the Polaroid Foundation, the Playboy Foundation, the Levi Strauss Foundation Bruce Jackson Diane Christian July 6, 1979 Death Row is a film about daily life on Death Row in Texas. When the film was made in March 1979, 114 men were housed in the special death cells of Ellis prison’s rows J-21… Read More »Death Row

Radical History Review Dylan Rodríguez October 1, 2006 Article about the global regime of policing and punishment More Information

Student Distancing, Epistemic Responsibility, and Injustice Studies in Philosophy and Education Matt S. Whitt June, 2015 In classes that examine entrenched injustices like sexism or racism, students sometimes use “distancing strategies” to dissociate themselves from the injustice being studied. Education researchers argue that distancing is a mechanism through which students, especially students of apparent privilege,… Read More »Other People’s Problems

Exploring gaols, bridewells and other forms of detention, 1500-1800 Rachel Weil Richard Bell Early Modern Prisons is a collective effort to find out what it was like to be locked up in the early modern period. We are interested in the economics and government of the prison, the fees, the food, how alcohol was sold, how… Read More »Early Modern Prisons