Kay Whitlock

Nancy A. Heitzeg

"From the beginning, evasions, hedging, deceptive rhetoric, trap doors, backroom reversals, hidden agendas, and slippery 'success' indicators have been built into the misleading and false promises of sweeping criminal justice reform. In the wake of the 2020 protests of racist structural violence, many people seek to better understand why contemporary reforms haven't produced more justice, especially justice for Black people. This book tells the story of the smoke-and-mirrors nature of those reform agendas and their ongoing failures to dismantle the entwined harms of structural racism and poverty so foundational to the criminal legal system. Carceral Con argues that it is not possible to fully grasp the implications of various reforms without inquiring more deeply into multiple forms of structural inequality and violence that are foundational to the United States and its systems of policing and carceral control. That is to say, racial, gendered, economic, and ableist hierarchies and discrimination are structured into the everyday workings of political, legal, and economic systems. Utilizing an abolitionist lens, this book asks readers to think differently about public safety, community well-being, and the purpose of justice. Chapters are organized to provide readers with basic information foundational to the subject, and then to follow the reform trail through the carceral funnel as most people are swept into the criminal justice system. Carceral Con encourages readers to make necessary paradigm shifts beyond the structures of racial capitalism and neoliberalism and to reject, or at least question, the notion that jails, prisons, and the policing that fill them are indispensable to the good society. Carceral Con also invites readers to reject reformism as an adequate response to the inequalities and brutality of the criminal legal system. Sometimes, as readers will see, it is better to withhold support, better to regroup and redefine the fight, than to embrace proposals that will make things worse"--

The Deceptive Terrain of Criminal Justice Reform

Carceral Con

Introduction : world-making and "criminal justice reform" -- Correctional control and the challenge of reform -- Follow the money -- Criminalization, policing, and profiling -- The slippery slope of pretrial reform -- Courts, sentencing, and "diversion" -- Imprisonment and release -- Threshold.

Education, Discipline, and Racialized Double Standards

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

This book offers a research and comparison-driven look at the school-to-prison pipeline, its racial dynamics, the connections to mass incarceration, and our flawed educational climate—and suggests practical remedies for change. • Provides readers with an understanding of the realities of the school-to-prison pipeline—its history, development, and racialized context and meaning—as well as the continued significance of race and other socially differentiating factors in shaping public policy and everyday decisions regarding "deviance," "discipline," and social control • Examines the under-explored dynamic that places a predominantly white teaching staff in schools that are predominantly schools of color, and considers the roles that stereotypes and cultural conflicts play in the labeling of students • Suggests viable options for action towards dismantling the institutionalized racism revealed by the school-to-prison pipeline via both policy reforms and transformational alternatives • Presents information relevant to a range of college courses, such as education, sociology of deviance, sociology of education, youth studies, legal studies, criminal justice, and racial/ethnic studies

Nancy A. Heitzeg

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