PLAP 3700 Chapter Notes - Chapter Caught Book: Civil Death, Institutional Racism, Issue One
13 Dec 2017
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It has altered how key governing institutions and public services and benefits operate everything from elections to schools to public housing. An estimated six million people have been disenfranchised either temporarily or permanently because of a criminal conviction. The aim is to devise penal reforms that attract overwhelming bipartisan consensus. But this goal comes at a high cost. It leaves largely unchallenged and unquestioned the political calculations and interests that built the carceral state in the first place. The narrow emphasis on evidence-based research related to recidivism fosters the impression that the birth of the carceral state was the result of bad or nonexistent research rather than bad politics or bad policy. The hyperincarceration of black men today has overshadowed the growing incarceration rates of poor whites, latinos, immigrants, and women: the carceral state has disproportionately hurt african american men. But it also has been targeting a rising number of people from other historically disadvantaged groups.
