Mass Incarceration

Paper details:

Working with what you see as the strongest evidence provided by various authors we read, particularly, but not restricted to, Davis (2003), Alexander (2012), Wacquant (2010), and Gottschalk (2006), briefly explain the rise of mass/hyper-incarceration in the U.S. Next, make an argument for what you see as a compelling approach to decarceration at micro, meso/mezzo, and/or macro levels. Be sure to demonstrate that you have thought about how intersectional analysis is relevant to this subject. The course readings appear below and you are welcome to bring in other references that you see as offering strong support for the case you are making or effectively challenging arguments made by authors we read in the seminar.

Remember the general guidelines for these essays:
• Although there is no minimum required number of pages for comprehensive examination answers, and focused, thorough, accurate writing is paramount, to achieve a well-developed answer, most students submit 10-15 pages for each comprehensive examination subject area.
• The number of references cited in an examination will vary depending on the subject area, focus of the question, and the body of literature informing the subject area. There is no required number of references, but most students cite 8-16 references per comprehensive examination subject area, depending on the nature of the references (i.e., books, book chapters, scholarly articles).

Readings, COMM 731, Fall 2015
Alexander, M. (2012). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. Rev. ed. New York, NY: The New Press.
Bassischus, M., Lee, A., & Spade, D. (2011). Building an abolitionist trans & queer movement with everything we’ve got. In E. A. Stanley & N. Smith (Eds.), Captive genders: Trans embodiment and the prison industrial complex (pp. 15-40). Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Berger, D. (2014). The struggle within: Prisons, political prisoners, and mass movements in the United States. Oakland, CA: PM Press.
Brown, M. (2009). The culture of punishment: Prison, society, and spectacle. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Brown, M. (2014). Visual criminology and carceral studies: Counter-images in the carceral age. Theoretical Criminology, 18(2), 176–197.
Davis, A. (2003). Are prisons obsolete? New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.
Davis, A. M. (2014). Apologies, reparations, and the continuing legacy of the European slave trade in the United States. Journal of Black Studies, 45(4), 271–286.
deVuono-powell, S., Schweidler, C., Walters, A., & Zohrabi, A. (2015). Who pays? The true cost of incarceration on families. Oakland, CA: Ella Baker Center, Forward Together, Research Action Design.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. (A. Sheridan, Trans.). 2nd ed. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Gottschalk, M. (2006). The prison and the gallows: The politics of mass incarceration in America. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Haney, L. A. (2010). Working through mass incarceration: Gender and the politics of prison labor from East to West. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 73-97.
Hartnett, Wood, & McCann, B. (2011). Turning silence into speech and action: Prison activism and the pedagogy of empowered citizenship. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 8(4), 331-352.
Jacobsen, C. , & Lempert, L. B. (2013). Institutional disparities: Consideration of gender in the commutation process for incarcerated women. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 39(1)265-289.
Kilgore, (2015). Mass incarceration: Examining and moving beyond the new Jim Crow. Critical Sociology, 41(2), 283–295.
Kim, M. E. (2010). Moving beyond critique: Creative interventions and reconstructions of community accountability. Social Justice, 37(4), 14-35.
Mogul, J. L., Ritchie, A. J., & Whitlock, K. (2011). Queer (in)justice: The criminalization of LGBT people in the United States. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. [Chap. 5: Caging deviance: Prisons as queer spaces]
Novek, E. (2013). “People like us”: A new ethic of prison advocacy in racialized America. In S. J., Hartnett, E. Novek, & J. K. Wood, Working for justice: A handbook for prison education and activism (pp. 203-220). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
PCARE. (2007). Fighting the prison industrial complex: A call to communication and cultural studies scholars to change the world. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 4(4), 402-420.
Schept, J. (2013). “A lockdown facility … with the feel of a small, private college”: Liberal politics, jail expansion, and the carceral habitus. Theoretical Criminology, 17(1), 71-88.
Wacquant, L. (2010). Class, race & hyper incarceration in revanchist America. Daedalus, 139(3), 74-90.
Wald, K. (1980). The San Quentin Six case: Perspective and analysis. Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order, 40(1-2), 231-251.
Weaver, V. M., & Lerman, A. E. (2010). Political consequences of the carceral state. American Political Science Review, 104(4), 817-833.
Woolford, A., & Ratner, R. S. (2010). Disrupting the informal–formal justice complex: On the transformative potential of civil mediation, restorative justice and reparations politics. Contemporary Justice Review, 13(1), 5–17.
Yousman, W. (2013). Challenging the media-incarceration complex through media education. In S. J., Hartnett, E. Novek, & J. K. Wood, Working for justice: A handbook for prison education and activism (pp. 141-159). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.