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\"What part does the imprisoned activist play in the conflict between regimes and their opponents around the world? Political incarceration today seems to offer the clearest evidence of a repressive regime, and of a determined political opposition. Yet surely there are more effective alternatives, for both states and their opponents, than incarceration. Imprisoned opponents, like those of the African National Congress in South Africa, or of Solidarity in Poland, or of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, may eventually claim or share power, while those who are executed or exiled will not pose the same threat. From the opposition's point of view, imprisonment, even though it deprives the movement of a valued contributor, is often a badge of honor. Our perceptions of political prisoners are awash in clichés and archetypes. We think of Nelson Mandela, or perhaps Václav Havel: good men, engaged in a moral struggle. But can that really be an acceptable definition, when Adolph Hitler too was a political prisoner? Can we understand what political prisoners are and what they do if we do not include those whose goals or ethics are different from our own? Dance in Chains--the title inspired by a song composed by a socialist on death row in a Warsaw prison 120 years ago--draws upon research in Poland, Ireland, South Africa and includes over a dozen different regimes over the last 150 years. These cases serve as pillars holding up a global investigation of the phenomenon. In each case, generations of political opponents have gone to prison since at least the turn of the twentieth century. Yet they also vary widely. Taken together, they yield a sufficiently wide spectrum to allow the reader to understand one of the central characters of modern political history\"--Provided by publisher.

Over the last few years, conservatives in Washington, D.C. and in bright-red states like Georgia and Texas, have abandoned their tough-on-crime rhetoric, and are now leading the charge to curb prison growth. In Prison Break, Steven Teles and David Dagan will explain how this striking turn of events occurred, how it will affect mass incarceration, and what it teaches us about achieving policy breakthroughs in our polarized age. Combining insights from law, sociology, and political science, Teles and Dagan will offer the first comprehensive account of this major political shift.

An exploration of the impact on imprisonment of individuals involved in the Civil Rights Movement as a whole.

This volume represents the first collection of essays devoted exclusively to Jacques Derrida's Death Penalty Seminars, conducted from 1999 to 2001. The volume includes essays from a range of scholars working in philosophy, law, Francophone studies, and comparative literature, including established Derridians, activist scholars, and emerging scholars. These essays attempt to elucidate and expand upon Derrida's deconstruction of the theologico-political logic of the death penalty in order to construct a new form of abolitionism, one not rooted in the problematic logics of sovereign power. These essays provide remarkable insight into Derrida’s ethical and political projects; this volume will not only explore the implications of Derrida’s thought on capital punishment and mass incarceration, but will also help to further elucidate the philosophical groundwork for his later deconstructions of sovereign power and the human/animal divide. Because Derrida is deconstructing the logic of the death penalty, rather than the death penalty itself, his seminars will prove useful to scholars and activists opposing all forms of state sanctioned killing. In compiling this volume, our goals were twofold: first, to make a case for Derrida's continuing importance in debates on capital punishment, mass incarceration, and police brutality, and second, to construct a new, versatile abolitionism, one capable of confronting all forms the death penalty might take.

\"American conservatism rose hand-in-hand with the growth of mass incarceration. For decades, conservatives deployed \"tough on crime\" rhetoric to attack liberals as out-of-touch elitists who coddled criminals while the nation spiraled toward disorder. As a result, conservatives have been the motive force in building our vast prison system. Indeed, expanding the number of Americans under lock and key was long a point of pride for politicians on the right - even as the U.S. prison population eclipsed international records. Over the last few years, conservatives in Washington, D.C. and in bright-red states like Georgia and Texas, have reversed course, and are now leading the charge to curb prison growth. In Prison Break, David Dagan and Steve Teles explain how this striking turn of events occurred, how it will affect mass incarceration, and what it teaches us about achieving policy breakthroughs in our polarized age. Combining insights from law, sociology, and political science, Teles and Dagan will offer the first comprehensive account of this major political shift. In a challenge to the conventional wisdom, they argue that the fiscal pressures brought on by recession are only a small part of the explanation for the conservatives' shift, over-shadowed by Republicans' increasing anti-statism, the waning efficacy of \"tough on crime\" politics and the increasing engagement of evangelicals. These forces set the stage for a small cadre of conservative leaders to reframe criminal justice in terms of redeeming wayward souls and rolling back government. These developments have created the potential to significantly reduce mass incarceration, but only if reformers on both the right and the left play their cards right. As Dagan and Teles stress, there is also a broader lesson in this story about the conditions for cross-party cooperation in our polarized age. Partisan identity, they argue, generally precedes position-taking, and policy breakthroughs are unlikely to come by \"reaching across the aisle,\" promoting \"compromise,\" or appealing to \"expert opinion.\" Instead, change happens when political movements redefine their own orthodoxies for their own reasons. As Dagan and Teles show, outsiders can assist in this process - and they played a crucial role in the case of criminal justice - but they cannot manufacture it. This book will not only reshape our understanding of conservatism and American penal policy, but also force us to reconsider the drivers of policy innovation in the context of American politics\"-- Provided by publisher.

After forty years of increasing prison construction and incarceration rates, winds of change are blowing through the American correctional system. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the unsustainability of the incarceration project, thereby empowering policy makers to reform punishment through fiscal prudence and austerity. In Cheap on Crime, Hadar Aviram draws on years of archival and journalistic research and builds on social history and economics literature to show the powerful impact of recession-era discourse on the death penalty, the war on drugs, incarceration practices, prison health care, and other aspects of the American correctional landscape.

\"In the United States today, one in every 31 adults is under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men. How did the 'land of the free' become the home of the world's largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the Reagan administration's War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton [posits that] the rise of mass incarceration [can be traced] to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society at the height of the civil rights era. Johnson's War on Poverty policies sought to foster equality and economic opportunity, but these initiatives were also rooted in widely shared assumptions about African Americans' role in urban disorder, which prompted Johnson to call for a simultaneous War on Crime\"--Provided by publisher.

In the last few decades, the al contours of American social inequality have been transformed by the rapid growth in the prison and jail America's prisons and jails have produced a new social group, a group of social outcasts who are joined by the shared experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial minority, and low education. [...] carcerai inequalities are intergenerational, affecting not just those who go to prison and jail but their families and children, too.