New Books in Policing, Incarceration, and Reform

Adam Henig, "Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

20 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

When twenty-three-year-old Ron LeFlore played his first organized baseball game, it was in a yard at the State Prison of Southern Michigan where he wa...

The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence

09 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they’ve sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd’s and Sandra Bland’...

Lee Ann S. Wang, "The Violence of Protection: Policing, Immigration Law, and Asian American Women" (Duke UP, 2026)

01 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Violence of Protection: Policing, Immigration Law, and Asian American Women (Duke UP, 2026) examines U.S. laws designed to rescue immigrant survi...

The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the Struggle for Work in America

26 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Most employers in the United States routinely conduct criminal background checks on job applicants, weeding out those with criminal convictions—a...

Foster Chamberlin, "Uncivil Guard: Policing, Military Culture, and the Coming of the Spanish Civil War" (Louisiana State UP, 2025)

15 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Uncivil Guard: Policing, Military Culture, and the Coming of the Spanish Civil War (Louisiana State UP, 2025), Foster Chamberlin evaluates the r...

Imperial Depths: Mark Letteney and Matthew Larsen on the Roman Prison System (JP)

12 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The notion of abolishing prisons strikes some as an impossible dream: could we could reasonably conceive of a society that responded to harm without t...

Joanna Bourke, "Five Evil Women: Hindley, West, Wuornos, Homolka, Tucker" (Reaktion, 2026)

01 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Why do certain women become icons of evil? Five Evil Women: Hindley, West, Wuornos, Homolka, Tucker (Reaktion, 2026) by Professor Joanna Bourke offe...

Seamus McElearney with Barbara Finkelstein, "Flipping Capo: How the FBI Dismantled the Real Sopranos" (Chicago Review Press, 2025)

26 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Séamus McElearney's early days on an FBI organized crime squad were full of grunt work. For months he was mired in administrative tasks, including t...

Mark D. Steinberg, "Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

21 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Using public storytelling as a driving force, Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Mo...

The Power of the State: Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and Minneapolis

12 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

When young people began disappearing in Argentina, their mothers searched for answers. Despite laws prohibiting protests and political gatherings, the...

Joshua Clark Davis, "Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back" (Princeton UP, 2025)

10 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back (Princeton UP, 2025) shatters one of the...

Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026) Revisited

08 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In December 2025, writer, civil rights attorney, playwright, speaker, and Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Glo...

Garrett Felber, "A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre" (AK Press, 2025)

06 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The first biography of the revolutionary political prisoner who laid the foundation for contemporary abolitionist struggles and Black anarchism. A Co...

Jens Ludwig, "Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

02 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually gro...

Michael Casiano, "Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore's Police State" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

01 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The racist roots of modern policing in Baltimore By the early twentieth century, postbellum assaults on civil rights and the advent of Jim Crow expan...

Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine

29 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flour...

Kimberley Johnson, "Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis" (Cornell UP, 2025)

25 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis (Cornell UP, 2025) by Dr. Kimberley Johnson is about how the Black Power movement res...

Simon Devereaux, "Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

25 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge UP, 2023) by Dr. Simon Devereaux provides the first comprehensive account of executio...

Terence Keel, "The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence" (Beacon Press, 2025)

23 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they’ve sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd’s and Sandra Bland’s, ...

Brian D. Behnken, "Brown and Blue: Mexican Americans, Law Enforcement, and Civil Rights in the Southwest, 1935-2025" (UNC Press, 2025)

21 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How police abuse ignited the Chicano movement in the Southwest Brown and Blue: Mexican Americans, Law Enforcement, and Civil Rights in the Southwest,...

Jamie Rowen, "Worthy of Justice: The Politics of Veterans Treatment Courts in Practice" (Stanford UP, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past three decades, jurisdictions across the United States have developed alternatives to traditional criminal procedures and punishments for...

Anna Sergi, "How to Recognize the Mafia Abroad: Critical Notes on ‘ndrangheta Mobility" (Policy Press, 2025)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The influence and spread of clans and families within the ‘ndrangheta - the Calabrian mafia - is international yet recognising their activities is n...

James Greenwood-Reeves, "Justifying Violent Protest: Law and Morality in Democratic States" (Routledge, 2023)

04 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Was the use of violence on January 6th Capitol attacks legitimate? Is the use of violence morally justified by members of Extinction Rebellion or Jus...

Deana Heath and Jinee Lokaneeta, "Policing and Violence in India: Colonial Origins and Contemporary Realities" (Speaking Tiger, 2025)

02 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Why does Indias police force, created under British rule, still echo the priorities of a bygone empire? And what is it about this institution, tasked ...

Trymaine Lee, "A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America" (St. Martins, 2025)

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A few years ago, Trymaine Lee, though fit and only 38, nearly died of a heart attack. When his then five-year-old daughter, Nola, asked her daddy why,...

Brittany Michelle Friedman, "Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons" (UNC Press, 2025)

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It is impossible to deny the impact of lies and white supremacy on the institutional conditions in US prisons. There is a particular power dynamic of ...

Eric King, "A Clean Hell: Anarchy and Abolition in America’s Most Notorious Dungeon" (PM Press, 2025)

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A Clean Hell opens the doors of America’s most secretive prison and lets the reader step into the cell to experience all the horrors the Federal Bur...

Heath Pearson, "Life Beside Bars: Confinement and Capital in an American Prison Town" (Duke UP, 2024)

18 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Life Beside Bars: Confinement and Capital in an American Prison Town (Duke UP, 2024), Heath Pearson showcases dynamic, interdependent comm...

David Garland, "Law and Order Leviathan: America’s Extraordinary Regime of Policing and Punishment" (Princeton UP, 2025)

14 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The United States has long been an international outlier, with a powerful business class, a weak social state, and an exceptional gun culture. In Law...

Jason A. Higgins, "Prisoners After War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Prisoners after War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration (University of Mass. Press, 2024), Dr. Jason Higgins examines the connections betw...

brian bean, "Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition" (Haymarket, 2025)

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Where do cops come from and what do they do? How did “modern policing” as we know it today come to be? What about the capitalist state necessitate...

Joshua Clark Davis, "Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back" (Princeton UP, 2025)

28 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back (Princeton UP, 2025) shatters one of the mo...

Patrick Parr, "Malcolm Before X" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

26 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing upon interviews, correspondence, and nearly 2000 pages of never-before-used prison records, Malcolm Before X is the definitive examination of ...

Deana Heath, "Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial India" (Oxford UP, 2021)

26 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bod...

Aileen Teague, "Policing on Drugs: The United States, Mexico, and the Origins of the Modern Drug War, 1969-2000" (Oxford UP, 2025)

22 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, images of cartels, security agents donning face coverings, graphs depicting egregious murder rates, and military guards at US border crossings ...

Mark Archuleta, "The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr: From Gentleman Bandit to Movie Star and Back Again" (U North Texas Press, 2025)

24 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1921 headlines across the country announced the death of Henry Starr, a burgeoning silent film star who was killed while attempting to rob a bank i...

Karen Robert, "Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina" (U New Mexico Press, 2025)

21 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina (U New Mexico Press, 2025) by Dr. Karen Robert tells the story of twenty-four Ford...

Breanne Pleggenkuhle and Joseph A. Schafer, "Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Responses and Adaptations in the US Criminal Justice System" (Southern Illinois UP, 2025)

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While COVID-19 lockdowns affected nearly everyone worldwide, feelings of anxiety and fear were exacerbated for those already entangled in the criminal...

Matthew D. C. Larsen and Mark Letteney, "Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration" (U California Press, 2025)

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (open access) examines spaces, practices, and ideologies of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean basin from...

LaShawn Harris, "Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City" (Beacon, 2025)

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On October 29, 1984, 66-year-old beloved Black disabled grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs was murdered in her own home. A public housing tenant 4 months beh...

Robert Cribb et al., "Detention Camps in Asia: The Conditions of Confinement in Modern Asian History" (Brill, 2022)

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why have Asian states - colonial and independent - imprisoned people on a massive scale in detention camps? How have detainees experienced the long m...

Kate Herrity, "Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown" (Bristol UP, 2024)

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The soundscape of prison life is that of constant clangs, bangs and jangles. What is the significance of this cacophonous din to those who live and wo...

Sandra Hempel, "Controlling Women: The Untold Story of Britain's First Female Police Force" (Hurst, 2025)

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Violence against women is out of control. Conviction rates for rape are so low that most survivors think it pointless to report, or later regret doing...

Michael Stauch, "Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The criminalization of Black youth was central to policing in urban America during the civil rights era and continued in Detroit even after the rise o...

David S. Wall, "Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age" (Polity, 2024)

13 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How has the digital revolution transformed criminal opportunities and behaviour? What is different about cybercrime compared with traditional criminal...

John Bardes, "The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930" (UNC Press, 2024)

05 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930 (UNC Press, 2024) reveals that Americans often assume that ...

Secrets of the Killing State

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the popular imagination, lethal injection is a slight pinch and a swift nodding off to forever-sleep. It is performed by well-qualified medical pro...

Keith Merith, "A Darker Shade of Blue: A Police Officer's Memoir" (ECW Press, 2024)

28 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A transparent first-hand account of a Black officer maneuvering through three terrifying yet rewarding decades of policing, all while seeking reform i...

Stacy Horn, "Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York" (Algonquin Books, 2019)

27 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world had ever seen, New York's Blackwell's Island, site of a lunatic asylum, two pris...

American Gangster

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

American Gangster (2007) is Ridley Scott’s homage to The French Connection: it’s got the right cars, clothes, and colors and is based on another...

Ben Snyder on Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this 100th episode (!!!) of Peoples & Things, host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Benjamin H. Snyder, Associate Professor of Sociology at Williams College...

Jeffrey P. Rogg, "The Spy and the State: The History of American Intelligence" (Oxford UP, 2025)

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Intelligence is all around us. We read about it in the news, wonder who is spying on us through our phones or computers, and want to know what is happ...

Brittany Friedman, "Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons" (UNC Press, 2025)

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons, Dr. Brittany Friedman delves into how the California Department of Correctio...

Daniel Karpowitz, "College in Prison: Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration" (Rutgers UP, 2017)

01 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the years, American colleges and universities have made various efforts to provide prisoners with access to education. However, few of these outr...

Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the...

Polly Jones, "Gulag Fiction: Labour Camp Literature from Stalin to Putin" (Bloombury, 2024)

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gulag Fiction: Labour Camp Literature from Stalin to Putin (Bloombury, 2024) is a unique exploration of Russian prose fiction about the Soviet labou...

Philip V. McHarris, "Beyond Policing" (Legacy Lit, 2024)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What would happen if policing disappeared? Would we be safe? This book imagines a world without police. It's evident that policing is a problem. But w...

Mary Bosworth, "Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control" (Princeton UP, 2024)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign nat...

Atiya Husain, "No God But Man: On Race, Knowledge, and Terrorism" (Duke UP, 2025)

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Atiya Husain’s No God but Man: On Race, Knowledge and Terrorism (Duke University Press, 2025) uses the FBI Most Wanted lists to rethink theoretica...

Ieva Jusionyte on American Guns in Mexico: Exit Wounds (EF, JP)

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

John and Elizabeth had the chance to talk with Ieva Jusionyte, anthropologist, journalist, emergency medical technician. Her award-winning books inc...

Rhys Machold, "Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements Across India and Palestine/Israel" (Stanford UP, 2024)

29 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Homeland security is rarely just a matter of the homeland; it involves the circulation and multiplication of policing practices across borders. Though...

"Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt's Incarcerated" (U California Press, 2025)

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt’s Incarcerated (U California Press, 2025), edited by Collective Antigone, is a groundbreaking collec...

Kiran Mehta, "To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750–1840" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Imprisonment was rarely used as punishment in Britain before 1800. The criminal justice system was based on terror and deterrence, sentencing convicts...

Mark Neocleous, "Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police" (Verso, 2025)

15 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Mark Neocleous about his new book Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police (Verso, 2025). For more than two decades, Neoc...

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023)

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capit...

Asim Qureshi and Walaa Quisay, "When Only God Can See: The Faith of Muslim Political Prisoners" (Pluto Press, 2024)

02 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Only God Can See: The Faith of Muslim Political Prisoners (Pluto Press, 2024), uncovers the unique experiences of Muslim political prisoners he...

Timothy P. R. Weaver, "Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City" (Temple UP, 2025)

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Looking closely at New York City's political development since the 1970s, three "political orders"--conservativism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism-...

Joshua Barker, "State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City" (Duke UP, 2024)

16 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between fear people experience in their lives and the government often informs key questions about the rule of law and justice. In na...

Michael Rembis, "Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum" (Oxford UP, 2025)

09 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The asylum--at once a place of refuge, incarceration, and abuse--touched the lives of many Americans living between 1830 and 1950. What began as a few...

Patricia A. Roos, "Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2015, Patricia Roos’s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at R...

Blessin Adams, "Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain" (HarperCollins, 2025)

02 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Early Modern Britain was awash with pamphlets, ballads, woodcuts broadcasting bloodthirsty tales of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, cunning femal...

Robin Bernstein, "Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit (U Chicago Press, 2024), Robin Bernstein tells the story of a...

Valentina N. Glajar, "The Secret Police Dossier of Herta Müller: A "File Story" of Cold War Surveillance" (Camden House, 2023)

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"Herta Müller should share her Nobel with the Securitate." This comment by a former officer in the Romanian secret police, or Securitate, was in reac...

David Lyon, "Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024)

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Surveillance is everywhere today, generating data about our purchasing, political, and personal preferences. Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction ...

Adam Elliott-Cooper, "Black Resistance to British Policing" (Manchester UP, 2021)

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As police racism unsettles Britain's tolerant self-image, Black Resistance to British Policing (Manchester UP, 2021) details the activism that made ...

Benjamin T. Smith, "The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade" (W. W. Norton, 2021)

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For over a century Mexico has been embroiled in a drug war dictated by the demands of their neighbor to the north. In The Dope: The Real History of t...

Sara Lodge, "The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective" (Yale UP, 2024)

29 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective (Yale UP, 2024), Sara Lodge tells stories of women who brought 19th century criminals to j...

Radha Kumar, "Police Matters: The Everyday State and Caste Politics in South India, 1900–1975" (Cornell UP, 2021)

28 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Police Matters: The Everyday State and Caste Politics in South India, 1900–1975 (Cornell UP, 2021) moves beyond the city to examine the intertwined...

Scott Huver, "Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210" (Post Hill Press, 2024)

22 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210 (Post Hill Press, 2024) explores the city’s true crime history, delving deep inside cases that ...

Leila Ullrich, "Victims and the Labour of Justice at the International Criminal Court: The Blame Cascade" (Oxford UP, 2024)

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Victim participation at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has routinely been viewed as an empty promise of justice or mere spectacle for audience...

Sandhya Fuchs, "Fragile Hope: Seeking Justice for Hate Crimes in India" (Stanford UP, 2024)

14 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fragile Hope: Seeking Justice for Hate Crimes in India (Stanford University Press, 2024). Against the backdrop of the global Black Lives Matter move...

Aisha M Beliso-de Jesús, "Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease" (Duke UP, 2024)

10 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1980, Charles Wetli---a Miami-based medical examiner and self-proclaimed “cult expert” of Afro-Caribbean religions---identified what he called ...

Kevin B. Smith, "The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How does a Black man in Austin get sent to prison on a 70-year sentence for stealing a tuna sandwich, likely costing Texas taxpayers roughly a million...

Risk

16 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Faye Raquel Gleisser tells us about Risk. A calculable danger in economics, athletics, sociology, or healthcare, risk ...

Anthony Grasso, "Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The United States incarcerates its citizens for property crime, drug use, and violent crime at a rate that exceeds any other developed nation – and ...

Sanaullah Khan, "Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self" (Lexington Books, 2023)

03 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self (Lexington Books, 2023) explores the interrelation between carceral conditi...

Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

08 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the st...

Brianna Nofil, "The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration" (Princeton UP, 2024)

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of ...

Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman, "The Power of the Badge: Sheriffs and Inequality in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The image of the sheriff is deeply embedded in American culture – from pacifist Jimmy Stewart in Destry Rides Again and gun averse Roy Scheider in...

Police First Responders Interacting with Domestic Violence Victims

27 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Kate Steel, Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of the We...

Felia Allum, "Women of the Mafia: Power and Influence in the Neapolitan Camorra" (Cornell UP, 2024)

21 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Women of the Mafia: Power and Influence in the Neapolitan Camorra (Cornell UP, 2024) by Dr. Felia Allum dives into the Neapolitan criminal underworl...

Michael David-Fox, "The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)

21 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023) compiles an array of recent scholarship that draws o...

Joy Knoblauch, "The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology and Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

18 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Inspired by the rise of environmental psychology and increasing support for behavioral research after the Second World War, new initiatives at the fed...

Michael L. Walker, "Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail" (Oxford UP, 2022)

15 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jails are the principal people-processing machines of the criminal justice system. Mostly they hold persons awaiting trial who cannot afford or have b...

Jess Whatcott, "Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics" (Duke UP, 2024)

07 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics (Duke UP, 2024), Jess Whatcott traces the link between US disability in...

Judge Frederic Block, "A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Decides Who Deserves It" (The New Press, 2024)

05 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The police officer who brutalized Abner Louima. A purveyor of child pornography. These are some of the defendants to have come before U.S. District Co...

David H. Price, "The American Surveillance State: How the US Spies on Dissent" (Pluto Press, 2022)

04 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post-9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations a...

Andy Clarno et al., "Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

03 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Chicago is a city with extreme concentrations of racialized poverty and inequity, one that relies on an extensive network of repressive agencies to po...

Robin Bernstein, "Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

23 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-dri...

Raj Jayadev, "Protect Your People: How Ordinary Families Are Using Participatory Defense to Challenge Mass Incarceration" (New Press, 2023)

18 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over two million Americans are currently in prison or jail. Another 4.5 million are on probation or parole. And nearly one in two Americans have a fam...