Prison Race » (1st Edition)

Renford Reese, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department and the Director of the Colorful Flags Program at Cal Poly Pomona University. Reese lectures regularly to inmates in California correctional facilities. He is the author of Leadership in the LAPD: Walking the Tightrope (2005) and the widely discussed book, American Paradox: Young Black Men (2004).

This book is written primarily for those members of the public-including lawmakers-who might be unaware of the damage wrought on U.S. society by decades of counterproductive criminal justice policies.

In these pages, two fundamental questions are addressed: Why have lawmakers embraced counterproductive criminal justice policies? What have been the consequences of these policies? Prison Race is a double entendre. During the past two decades in the U.S., there has been a move toward incarceration, and one group in particular has been impacted by discriminatory and unjust corrections policies driven by the promises of politicians to "get tough on crime." Although this book is more about criminal justice policies than it is about race, it examines these policies in the context of their impact on the African American male population. The federal government's extraordinarily slow response to the desperate black victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the surrounding areas has forced the U.S. to examine, once again, its most recalcitrant sociocultural phenomenon: racial bias.

The public was shocked and outraged at the callous and insensitive treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib; however, those familiar with conditions in U.S. prisons were not surprised. Multiple human rights violations exist within the walls of our prisons, which are woefully overcrowded. Inmates are given substandard health care, sexually assaulted, warehoused and punished without opportunities for rehabilitation. Prison Race candidly examines prison conditions in the U.S. It also explores, among other issues, the business of prisons, including the positioning of prison guard unions as influential interest groups, the proliferation of prisons, and the role of prison labor in a cycle of capitalistic exploitation.

This book integrates survey data and interviews with inmates, parolees, correctional officers, and others to examine one of America's most shameful creations, a Prison Race.

Ch. 1	Social injustice	11
Ch. 2	The race card	29
Ch. 3	The life of an inmate	57
Ch. 4	Life of a free felon	77
Ch. 5	Ignoble laws	105
Ch. 6	Assault on human rights	131
Ch. 7	Corporate crime	153
Ch. 8	The prison business	177
App. A	Perceptions of criminal justice policies	199
App. B	Reintegration Academy Cal Poly Pomona	215
App. C	Poetic injustice	221