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We all know that orange is the new black and mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow, but how much do we actually know about the structure, goals, and impact of our criminal justice system? Understanding Mass Incarceration offers the first comprehensive overview of the incarceration apparatus put in place by the world's largest jailer: the United States.Drawing on a growing body of academic and professional work, Understanding Mass Incarceration describes in plain English the many competing theories of criminal justice - from rehabilitation to retribution, from restorative justice to justice reinvestment. In a lively and accessible style, author James Kilgore illuminates the difference between prisons and jails, probation and parole, laying out key concepts and policies such as the War on Drugs, broken windows policing, three-strikes sentencing, the school-to-prison pipeline, recidivism, and prison privatization.



About the Author

James Kilgore

James Kilgore is an educator, writer and activist based in Urbana, Illinois. He writes widely on issues of mass incarceration and the politics and history of southern Africa. He has written four novels, all of which he drafted during his six and a half years in prison.He is also the author of a primer on the prison-industrial-complex: Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time. When he is not writing, he works in his community to fight against jail building and to open door of opportunity for people with felony convictions.



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