The Lost Memory of Skin by 
Anatomy of Innocence by 
Locking up Our Own by 
Understanding Mass Incarceration by 
The New Jim Crow by
Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindnessis an unflinching dissection of the racial biases built into the American prison system. Named after the laws that enforced racial segregation in the southern United States until the mid-1960s, The New Jim Crowargues that while America is now legally a colorblind society - treating all races equally under the law - many factors combine to build profound racial weighting into the legal system. The US now has the world's highest rate of incarceration, and a disproportionate percentage of the prison population is comprised of African-American men. Alexander's argument is that different legal factors have combined to mean both that African-Americans are more likely to be targeted by police, and to receive long jail sentences for their crimes. While many of Alexander's arguments and statistics are to be found in other books and authors' work,The New Jim Crowis a masterful example of the reasoning skills that communicate arguments persuasively. Alexander's skills are those fundamental to critical thinking reasoning: organizing evidence, examining other sides of the question, and synthesizing points to create an overall argument that is as watertight as it is persuasive.
Imprisoning Communities by
At no time in history, and certainly in no other democratic society, have prisons been filled so quickly and to such capacity than in the United States. And nowhere has this growth been more concentrated than in the disadvantaged--and primarily minority--neighborhoods of America's largesturban cities. In the most impoverished places, as much as 20% of the adult men are locked up on any given day, and there is hardly a family without a father, son, brother, or uncle who has not been behind bars.While the effects of going to and returning home from prison are well-documented, little attention has been paid to the impact of removal on neighborhoods where large numbers of individuals have been imprisoned. In the first detailed, empirical exploration of the effects of mass incarceration onpoor places, Imprisoning Communities demonstrates that in high doses incarceration contributes to the very social problems it is intended to solve: it breaks up family and social networks; deprives siblings, spouses, and parents of emotional and financial support; and threatens the economic andpolitical infrastructure of already struggling neighborhoods. Especially at risk are children who, research shows, are more likely to commit a crime if a father or brother has been to prison. Clear makes the counterintuitive point that when incarceration concentrates at high levels, crime rates willgo up. Removal, in other words, has exactly the opposite of its intended effect: it destabilizes the community, thus further reducing public safety.Demonstrating that the current incarceration policy in urban America does more harm than good, from increasing crime to widening racial disparities and diminished life chances for youths, Todd Clear argues that we cannot overcome the problem of mass incarceration concentrated in poor places withoutincorporating an idea of community justice into our failing correctional and criminal justice systems.
The School to Prison Pipeline by
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
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