Law Commons^™

The Price Of Carceral Citizenship: Punishment, Surveillance, And Social Welfare Policy In An Age Of Carceral Expansion, Reuben Jonathan Miller, Amanda Alexander

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The unprecedented rise in the number of people held in U.S. jails and prisons has garnered considerable attention from policy makers, activists, and academics alike. Signaled in part by Michelle Alexander’s New York Times bestseller, The New Jim Crow, and the unlikely coalition of activists, policy makers, celebrities, and business leaders on both sides of the political aisle who have pledged to end mass incarceration in our lifetime, the prison system has returned to public policy discourse in a way that was unforeseen less than a decade ago. On any given day in 2014, just over 2.3 million people were …

Class As Caste: The Thirteenth Amendment’S Applicability To Class-Based Subordination, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

As part of a symposium marking the sesquicentennial of the Thirteenth Amendment, this Article briefly explores whether the Thirteenth Amendment applies to class-based subordination. While recognizing that the increasingly rigid class-based stratification of our society, rampant discrimination against the poor, increasing income inequality, and the concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of so few are all pressing social challenges that the legal system must address, this Article concludes that generalized class-based discrimination likely would not fall within the scope of the “badges and incidents of slavery” that the Amendment prohibits.

This Article argues, however, that the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition …

Anti-Incarcerative Remedies For Illegal Conditions Of Confinement, Margo Schlanger

Articles

Opposition to mass incarceration has entered the mainstream. But except in a few states, mass decarceration has not, so far, followed: By the end of 2014 (the last data available), nationwide prison population had shrunk only 3% off its (2009) peak. Jail population, similarly, was down just 5% from its (2008) peak. All told, our current incarceration rate - 7 per 1,000 population - is the same as in 2002, and four times the level in 1970, when American incarceration rates began their rise. Our bloated prisoner population includes many groups of prisoners who are especially likely to face grievous …