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Full-Text Articles in Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance

Slow Violence And Racial Capitalism: Understanding Mass Incarceration Through A Case Study Of The California Prison System, Mason Joiner Apr 2022

Slow Violence And Racial Capitalism: Understanding Mass Incarceration Through A Case Study Of The California Prison System, Mason Joiner

Senior Theses

This thesis will analyze the growth of the California prison system, situating it in the national context of mass incarceration in the United States. In Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s book Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, Gilmore utilizes the theory of racial capitalism to explain the history and development of the California prison system. By analyzing Gilmore’s arguments about racial capitalism and integrating them with Rob Nixon’s theory of slow violence from his book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, this thesis provides a new perspective in the current discourse around mass incarceration. …


The Racial Oppression In America’S Mass Incarceration, Marcella Sorrentino May 2018

The Racial Oppression In America’S Mass Incarceration, Marcella Sorrentino

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

This paper seeks to expose the racial oppression embedded within the United States' practice of mass incarceration and will provide recommendations to ameliorate this discriminatory practice that harshly and inequitably impacts people of color. Many minority communities are stuck in a continuous cycle of poverty and incarceration, in part because they are targeted and oppressed by the criminal justice system more frequently than middle class white communities. Consequently, incarcerated people of color exhibit high rates of recidivism because of being stripped of resources and being sent back to impoverished, drug-ridden neighborhoods. The War on Drugs in the 1980s and the …


Mass Incarceration: Slavery Renamed, Samantha Pereira May 2018

Mass Incarceration: Slavery Renamed, Samantha Pereira

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

This paper aims to analyze the connections between slavery and mass incarceration. It begins by giving background information regarding the topic and setting the framework to argue that slavery was never abolished, but was instead continued using mass incarceration. The paper then goes on to further explain this concept by examining the constitutional and judicial laws in the United States, slave plantations and prisons, with regard to geographical, architectural, and operational design, and finally, the role of society in both systems. The framework for continuing slavery was set with the passing of the 13th Amendment and has since been expanded …


Contributing Factors To Mass Incarceration And Recidivism, Nayely Esparza Flores May 2018

Contributing Factors To Mass Incarceration And Recidivism, Nayely Esparza Flores

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The United States has been historically known for having the most incarcerated individuals in its country. Approximately 2.3 million adults can be found under some type of penal control. Since the 1960s, the number of incarcerated individuals can be attributed to decades of tough on crime policies, controversial police practices, and racism. Mass incarceration has raised significant social justice issues, especially since it has been heavily concentrated on poor, uneducated African American men. Moreover, recidivism rates in the United States are at an all time high with over 76.6% of offenders reoffending and returning to prison (National Institute of Justice, …


The American Nightmare: Land Of The Incarcerated, Jamara Bernard May 2016

The American Nightmare: Land Of The Incarcerated, Jamara Bernard

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

A collection of poems focusing on the mass incarceration of African-American men and how the prison industrial complex is designed to legally exploit prisoners specifically for profits. Along with a reflective essay about the history of legal discrimination and the creative process by which the poems were created. Then how it ties in with the capstone course theme of race, gender, class, feminist theory, and social justice.


Activism And Pedagogies: Feminist Reflections, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Michelle Fine Jan 2007

Activism And Pedagogies: Feminist Reflections, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

Together our two essays move between scenes of teaching and researching with women and men who are or have been in prison. Having written on ethnography, autoethnography, and participatory research, we both have sought a method that would allow us to abandon superficial identifications, mistaken for deep connection, with those who are or have been incarcerated. While we are conscious of the failures and successes of our attempts, we nonetheless write because what we have learned about the state's support for mass incarceration and the state's retreat from public higher education—particularly for persons of color—more than warrants it. With this …