The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
New York : New Press, 2010.
xi, 290 p. ; 24 cm.

This is a book I've been wanting to read since it first came out in 2010.  It received a lot of praise, and time has proven that the praise was not misplaced.

In the last couple of years - especially following the killings of Treyvon Martin and Michael Brown and the subsequent emergence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement - the national debate on the injustices of law enforcement and the criminal justice system toward black people in the US has taken on a vibrant and expansive life.  Reading The New Jim Crow during the summer of 2016, I couldn't help but wonder how amazed Michelle Alexander must feel about events that have occurred in the ten years since she published the book.

Her book is a thorough, well researched, and toughly argued case against the US criminal justice system - especially the mass incarceration of African Americans since the ramping up of the War on Drugs.

What makes her book especially powerful - in addition to its research data and passion for justice - is that it shows how the new mass incarceration of black people is simply a continuation of the historic pattern of racism in the US adapting to new social changes and traditions in order to reestablish the oppression of African Americans: first slavery, then after the Civil War and reconstruction comes Jim Crow, and after the Civil Rights movement and legal gains, comes the War on Drugs and the lopsided application of it against people of color.

It's a powerful book and still very timely.  I'd recommend it to any student wanting to research or understand mass incarceration and institutional race

Schooled in Prison

A Question of Freedom by R. Dwayne Betts
New York : Avery, 2010, c2009.
1st trade pbk. ed.
 240 p. ; 21 cm.   

There have been some really good books out lately about mass incarceration - such as The New Jim Crow and the comic book format, Race to Incarcerate.  A Question of Freedom is a great addition to the literature - and especially for high school age readers - in that it personalizes the story in a compelling and finely written memoir by a young man who was sentenced as an adult to 9 years in prison at the age of 16.

Yes, he committed a serious crime - using a gun to carjack a man in a mall parking lot.  And yet under the relatively new draconian laws now on the books in many states, he was sentenced a a sixteen year old to serve years in adult penitentiaries in the state of Virginia.

In prison Betts underwent a transformation from a basically good student who was morally adrift - to a thoughtful and powerful writer.  His writing conveys - without melodrama - the really twisted world of the US prison system where who you are as a human being is lost in a bizarre world of regulations, danger, and violence.  I was especially struck by how much time Betts spent in "the hole" - solitary confinement for minor rule infractions, and how he ended up in Virginia's infamous Red Onion "super max" prison, supposedly for the "worst of the worst" - even though he never did anything more violent than push a rookie guard's hands off of his genitals when that new guard was over zealous in doing a pat down search.

Again and again, Betts also reflects on the sad racial facts of the US prison system where the majority of prisoners are Black and Latino, and on the draconian "get tough" sentencing that locks people away for decades.  He himself could have been sentenced to life in prison!

I really like how Betts does not try to shock us with violent or terrifying episodes from prison, but instead conveys the soul killing world of prison - and the redemptive nature of the decent human beings who were kind or protective of him.

I would highly recommend this book for reading in classes.  It is ultimately a hopeful book.  The author has gone on to be a successful poet in addition to this fine non-fiction memoir.  I will be recommending it to any students looking for something about prisons, biographies, young writers, and mass incarceration.