The Jailer’s Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration is Damaging America by Kevin B. Smith
The Jailer’s Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration is Damaging America by Kevin B. Smith
Although prison populations in most states have declined since their early 21st century peak, mass incarceration remains a serious issue. How is it that the “Land of the Free” imprisons its citizens “at rates autocracies fear to replicate,” Kevin B. Smith wonders.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln political science professor investigates the question in The Jailer’s Reckoning, climbing mountains of data to reach several conclusions. While mocking the unhistorical historiography of Michel Foucault, Smith acknowledges that the French thinker had a point: prisons are instruments of social control. Smith adds the uncomfortable realization that in a democracy where the majority feels threatened by a minority, imprisonment becomes the chosen weapon of control. One in six African American men have been imprisoned, many losing voting rights even when released.
Smith dismisses many ideological positions on both sides of the issue, pointing to the sad realization that prison reform gets chewed up and spit out in the political process and bumper sticker solutions will seldom carry the question forward.
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