Carceral Con

Introduction : world-making and "criminal justice reform" -- Correctional control and the challenge of reform -- Follow the money -- Criminalization, policing, and profiling -- The slippery slope of pretrial reform -- Courts, sentencing, and "diversion" -- Imprisonment and release -- Threshold.

"In This Place Called Prison offers a vivid and unique examination of religion within prison and argues for its key role among some of society's most vulnerable. Although prison is defined by control--from rules and routines to mandatory labor and monitored visits--for many, religion offers a way out. Religion challenges what it means to be punished and affords community and connection in the face of fear and isolation. Rachel Ellis spent twelve months conducting ethnographic research inside the guarded gates of Mapleside Prison, a US state women's correctional facility, talking with hundreds of incarcerated women, staff, and religious volunteers. Through their stories, Ellis sets the scene of mass incarceration today, detailing how contemporary prisons both reflect and worsen the systemic racial, social, and gender inequalities characteristic of the American landscape of profound stratification. She also offers insight into how religion relates to the carceral system, tracing the role of religious institutions throughout the history of prison punishment. Offering a trenchant account of how religion collides and colludes with the state in an enduring tension between freedom and control, In This Place Called Prison speaks to the human quest for dignity and light in even the darkest of places"--

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.

Prison, Inc. provides a first-hand account of life behind bars in a controversial new type of prison facility: the private prison. These for-profit prisons are becoming increasingly popular as state budgets get tighter. Yet as privatization is seen as a necessary and cost-saving measure, not much is known about how these facilities are run and whether or not they can effectively watch over this difficult and dangerous population. For the first time, Prison, Inc. provides a look inside one of these private prisons as told through the eyes of an actual inmate, K.C. Carceral who has been in the prison system for over twenty years.

This book focuses on the analysis of sensorial representations of violent images in contemporary films that portray embodied violation in urban environments of street clashes and prisons in Northern Ireland and Brazil during the late twentieth century. There is an emphasis on the representation of senses and how they play a significant role in structuring narratives and mapping the cinematic landscapes of conflict. Whether on the streets and prisons of Belfast, Derry, São Paulo or Rio, the attention is on the endangered body and its fragility or strength. Analyzing films through the novel framework of sensorial perspective enables the understanding of urban and prison landscapes as part of a somatic geography that affects the corporeal engagement of the participants. As a multicultural study, this is an essential book for those interested in the relationship between cinema and history while taking into consideration the interactive roles of the senses and perception.

Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly‚ Slate‚ Chronicle of Higher Education‚ Literary Hub, Book Riot‚ and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller—"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education—with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." —Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S." Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.

Chapters 5, 12, and 18 of this work are available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International open access licence. These parts of the work are free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data and Intelligent Machines is the first volume to bring together leading feminist thinkers from across the disciplines to explore the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and related data-driven technologies on human society. Recent years have seen both an explosion in AI systems and a corresponding rise in important critical analyses of these technologies. Central to these analyses has been feminist scholarship, which calls upon the AI sector to be accountable for designing and deploying AI in ways that further, rather than undermine, the pursuit of social justice. This book aims to be a touchstone text for AI researchers concerned with the social impact of their systems, as well as theorists, students and educators in the field of gender and technology. It demonstrates the importance of an intersectional understanding of the risks and benefits of AI, approaching feminism as a political project that aims to challenge various interlocking forms of injustice, social inequality and structural relations of power. Feminist AI showcases the vital contributions of feminist scholarship to thinking about AI, data, and intelligent machines as well as laying the groundwork for future feminist scholarship on AI. It brings together scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, from computer science, software engineering, and medical sciences to political theory, anthropology, and literature. It provides an entry point for scholars of AI, science and technology into the diversity of feminist approaches to AI, and creates a rich dialogue between scholars and practitioners of AI to examine the powerful congruences and generative tensions between different feminist approaches to new and emerging technologies. It features original and essential works specially selected to span multiple generations of practitioners and scholars. These contributors are also attuned to conversations at industry-level around the risks and possibilities that frame the drive to adopt AI. This collection reflects the increasingly blurred divide between the academy, industry and corporate research groups and brings interdisciplinary feminist insights together with postcolonial studies, disability theory, and critical race studies to confront ageism, racism, sexism, ableism, and class-based oppressions in AI.

Recent attacks on Ethnic Studies, revisionist actions in curriculum content, and anti-immigrant policies are creating a new culture war in America. This important work lays out the current debates—both in K–12 and higher education—to uncover the dangers and to offer solutions. In 2010, HB 2281—a law that bans ethnic studies in Arizona—was passed; in the same year, Texas whitewashed curriculum and textbook changes at the K–12 level. Since then, the nation has seen a rise in the legal and political war on Ethnic Studies, revisionist actions in curriculum content, and anti-immigrant policies, creating a new culture war in America. "White" Washing American Education demonstrates the value and necessity of Ethnic Studies in the 21st century by sharing the voices of those in the trenches—educators, students, community activists, and cultural workers—who are effectively using multidisciplinary approaches to education. This two-volume set of contributed essays provides readers with a historical context to the current struggles and attacks on Ethnic Studies by examining the various cultural and political "wars" that are making an impact on American educational systems, and how students, faculty, and communities are impacted as a result. It investigates specific cases of educational whitewashing and challenges to that whitewashing, such as Tom Horne's attack along with the State Board of Education against the Mexican American studies in the Tucson School District, the experiences of professors of color teaching Ethnic Studies in primarily white universities across the United States, and the role that student activists play in the movements for Ethnic Studies in their high schools, universities, and communities. Readers will come away with an understanding of the history of Ethnic Studies in the United States, the challenges and barriers that Ethnic Studies scholars and practitioners currently face, and the ways to advocate for the development of Ethnic Studies within formal and community-based spaces.