Race, Incarceration, and American Values (Boston Review Books)

Loury, Glenn C.

ISBN 10: 0262123118 / ISBN 13: 9780262123112

Edité par Mit Pr (edition ), 2008

A propos de cet article

The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way.

N° de réf. du vendeur 0262123118-7-1

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Race, Incarceration, and American Values (Boston Review Books)
• Éditeur: Mit Pr (edition )
• Date de parution: 2008
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0262123118
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780262123112
• Reliure: Hardcover
• État de l'article: Fair

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

Why stigmatizing and confining a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to all Americans.

The United States, home to five percent of the world's population, now houses twenty-five percent of the world's prison inmates. Our incarceration rate—at 714 per 100,000 residents and rising—is almost forty percent greater than our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). More pointedly, it is 6.2 times the Canadian rate and 12.3 times the rate in Japan. Economist Glenn Loury argues that this extraordinary mass incarceration is not a response to rising crime rates or a proud success of social policy. Instead, it is the product of a generation-old collective decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Whatever the explanation, Loury argues, the uncontroversial fact is that changes in our criminal justice system since the 1970s have created a nether class of Americans—vastly disproportionately black and brown—with severely restricted rights and life chances. Moreover, conservatives and liberals agree that the growth in our prison population has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Stigmatizing and confining of a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to Americans. Loury's call to action makes all of us now responsible for ensuring that the policy changes.

À propos de l?auteur

Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Economics at Brown University. A 2002 Carnegie Scholar, he is the author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality.

Pamela S. Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School, cofounded the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, through which students litigate live cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.