Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons^™

Justice Involvement During Covid-19 And The Possibility Of Transitional Justice, Rachel A. Ponder

Doctoral Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced numerous unprecedented political, social, and economic challenges that resulted in unprecedented responses by policy makers. As result, existing inequalities and injustices rooted in a dense history of structural and institutional violence were uncovered and exacerbated. As of June 2021, at least 398,627 people in prison tested positive for COVID-19 and at least 2,715 had died (The Marshall Project 2021). In the United States, the inmate population is disproportionately made up of poor, people of color. This is a pattern that is rooted in the country’s long history of racism and white supremacy. This cycle continues as …

Racialized Mass Incarceration In The United States: Exposing The Facade Of “Liberty And Justice For All”, Emily Wingfield

The Compass

No abstract provided.

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. …

Decarceration's Inside Partners, Seema Saifee

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines a hidden phenomenon in criminal punishment. People in prison, during their incarceration, have made important—and sometimes extraordinary—strides toward reducing prison populations. In fact, stakeholders in many corners, from policy makers to researchers to abolitionists, have harnessed legal and conceptual strategies generated inside the walls to pursue decarceral strategies outside the walls. Despite this outside use of inside moves, legal scholarship has directed little attention to theorizing the potential of looking to people on the inside as partners in the long-term project of meaningfully reducing prison populations, or “decarceration.”

Building on the change-making agency and revolutionary ideation inside …

Specter Of Reform: Understanding The Violent Crime Control And Law Enforcement Act Of 1994 And Its Role In Expanding The Modern Prison Industrial Complex, Timothy Nii-Okai Welbeck

Arlen Specter Center Research Fellowship

The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation in recorded history, and currently houses roughly 25% of the world’s prison population. Though the US prison population dipped in 2016 to its lowest rate since 1993, the sheer number of people under the supervision of the criminal justice system within the country is staggering. As of 2012, one in one hundred adults in the US are in jail or prison, which makes the US the nation with the world’s largest prison population. The US also leads the world in rate of incarceration. Thus, the nation’s prisons teem …

The Never-Ending Grasp Of The Prison Walls: Banning The Box On Housing Applications, Ashley De La Garza

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

See, Judge, Act: Restorative Justice And Catholic Social Teaching’S Impact On American Incarceration, Maxim Caron

Montserrat Annual Writing Prize

No abstract provided.

Safe Consumption Sites And The Perverse Dynamics Of Federalism In The Aftermath Of The War On Drugs, Deborah Ahrens

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In this Article, I explore the complicated regulatory and federalism issues posed by creating safe consumption sites for drug users—an effort which would regulate drugs through use of a public health paradigm. This Article details the difficulties that localities pursuing such sites and other non-criminal-law responses have faced as a result of both federal and state interference. It contrasts those difficulties with the carte blanche local and state officials typically receive from federal regulators when creatively adopting new punitive policies to combat drugs. In so doing, this Article identifies systemic asymmetries of federalism that threaten drug policy reform. While traditional …

Mass Incarceration, Jaime D. Bunting

Sociology Class Publications

This paper takes a brief look into Mass Incarceration: a phenomenon in the United States that accounts for the imprisonment of 2.3 million people (25% of the world's imprisoned population). It includes the synthetization of ideas by notable scholars within the realm of social justice studies, such as Bryan Stevenson and Ibram X. Kendi, in order to display how mass incarceration discriminates against minorities, upholds systemic injustice, and has effects on individuals who are incarcerated, as well as their families and the communities they live in. In order to set the context, this paper also mentions the "boom" of incarceration …

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

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

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 Criminalization Of Education: Combating The School-To-Prison Pipeline Through Disciplinary Policy And Social Change, Lindsay Hemminger

Honors Theses

This thesis builds on previous literature about the implications of zero tolerance policies, policing in schools, and the school-to-prison pipeline. I evaluate the evolution of disciplinary policies within public school districts since the abandoning of zero tolerance. Specifically, I use the Schenectady and Niskayuna districts and apply theories about discipline, class, race, and achievement to evaluate and compare the ways in which the school-to-prison pipeline and disciplinary policies function. Through a series of case studies, I found that both schools, like many others, have taken significant steps towards moving away from criminalizing and punitive disciplinary measures. However, because of the …

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

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 …