Resources: Scholarly & Journalistic (with brief annotations)
Allen, Francis A. The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal: Penal Policy and Social Purpose (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1981). Analyzes the causes for the decline, in the 1970s and after, within policy, judicial, and political thinking in the U.S.
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Rev. Ed. (N.Y.: The New Press, 2012). The major study which, with its 1st edition in 2010, brought the issue of mass incarceration to wider public attention.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Global Human Rights Clinic, Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers. (N.Y.: The American Civil Liberties Union; Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, 2022). Comprehensive data on the circumstances of incarcerated workers in all 50 U.S. states together with recommendations for ending their exploitation.
Anguiano, Dani, “U.S. Prison Workers Produce $11bn Worth of Goods and Services a Year for a Pittance.” The Guardian, June 15, 2022. A statement of what’s in the ACLU’s “Captive Labor” report.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=edit_2221&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1655312677
Barkow, Rachel. Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2019).
Bartley, Lawrence and Donald Washington, Jr., “Prison Labor, Low Wages and the Side Hustle.” The Marshall Project. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/02/09/prison-jobs-wages-luenell-side-hustles?utm_campaign=share-tools&utm_content=post-top&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email
Bazelon, Emily. Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. (N.Y: Random House, 2019)
Bazelon, Lara. Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice after Wrongful Conviction. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018).
Blackman, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Reenslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II (N.Y.: Doubleday, 2008).
Buchanan, G. Sidney. “The Quest for Freedom: A Legal History of the Thirteenth Amendment.” Houston Law Review 12 (1974), p. 1-?
Carter, William J. “Race, Rights, and the Thirteenth Amendment: Defining the Badges and Incidents of Slavery.” U. C. Davis Law Review 1311 (2007).
Difilippo, Dana. “ Inflation Hits Inmates’ Wallets, Even as Their Wages Have Flatlined.” New Jersey Monitor, September 28, 2022. https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/09/28/inflation-hits-inmates-wallets-even-as-their-wages-have-flatlined/
Gottschalk, Marie. Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2015). A comprehensive overview of the political, social and economic forces leading to the current practices of mass incarceration.
Haskins, Zachary. “Public Reason and the Justification of Punishment.” Criminal Justice Ethics 41:2 (August 2022), 121-141.
Hedges, Chris. Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison. (N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 2021). Hedges, a former N.Y. Times journalist, reports on his experience of a year teaching inmates in a maximum-security NJ prison (Eastern Jersey State Prison).
Herivel, Tara & Wright, Paul, eds. Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration. (N.Y.: The New Press; W. W. Norton, 2009). It’s a compilation of individual articles previously published, up through 2007, in Prison Legal News.
Hirsch, Adam Jay. The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1992). Essential background on the religious origins and punitive nature of American “penitentiaries.”
Jung, Taylor. “Racial Justice Measures Languish as Advocates Fear Backsliding.” NJ Spotlight, January 3, 2023. https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2023/01/nj-racial-justice-advocates-fear-nj-backsliding-amid-anti-crime-focus/
Keller, Bill. What’s Prison For? Punishment and Rehabilitation in the Age of Mass Incarceration. (N.Y.: Columbia Global Reports, 2021). Keller, a former journalist and subsequently editor at the N.Y. Times (through 2011) stepped down and became a founding editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project—a nonprofit that reports on criminal justice in the U.S.
Lewis, Orlando F. The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs, 1776-1845. (Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1967). See note on Adam Jay Hirsch, above.
McGoogan, Cara . “’You’re a Slave’: Inside Louisiana’s Forced Prison Labor and a Failed Overhaul Attempt. The Washington Post, January 2, 2023.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/01/01/louisiana-prison-labor-ballot-slavery/?utm_source=The+Marshall+Project+Newsletter&utm_campaign=82909f27e7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_04_12_14&utm_medium=email
McLennan, Rebecca. The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protests, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1886-1941. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008).
Miller, Reuben Jonathan. Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration. (N.Y.: Little, Brown, & Co., 2021). Growing up in Chicago and eventually becoming a professor of social work, he narrates the story of the impact of the criminal justice system on members of his family and his community.
Morris, Herbert. “Persons and Punishment.” In H. Morris,On Guilt and Innocence. (Berkeley & Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1976). Frequently cited for philosophical reflections on the issue of just, proportional punishment.
NJ Institute for Social Justice – video on need for Reparations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t–aWn1ziIc
Nussbaum, Martha. “Equity and Mercy.” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 22:2 (Spring 1993): 83-125. An examination of the alternatives of retributivism vs. mercy by a scholar who’s a classicist and feminist.
Pfaff, John F. Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform. (N.Y.: Basic Books, 2017).
Pope, James Gray. “What’s Different About the Thirteenth Amendment and Why Does It Matter?” Maryland Law Review 71 (2011).
Prison Policy Initiative. Reports. – https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports.html
Reports are on various topics: e.g. “How Much Do Incarcerated People Earn in Each State? [as of April 2017],“ Chronic Punishment: The Unmet Health Needs of People in State Prisons,” “Following the Money of Mass Incarceration,” “The Company Store and the Literally Captive Market: Consumer Law in Prisons and Jails,” and more.
Prison Policy Initiative – Blog. Leah Wang, “The State Prison Experience: Too Much Drudgery, Not Enough Opportunity,” September 2, 2022. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/09/02/prison_opportunities/
Ricoeur, Paul. “The Golden Rule: Exegetical and Theological Perplexities.” New Testament Studies 36 (1990): 392-397. This short essay, by an eminent French philosopher, contrasts a central ethical stance linked to the Old Testament (“an eye for an eye”) with that of the New Testament (which, in his view, ultimately goes even beyond the “Golden Rule”). It thus outlines an essential feature of the retributionist approach to punishment, as well as alternatives to that within the Western tradition.
Shelby, Tommie. The Idea of Prison Abolition. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2022). A philosopher currently at Harvard Univ., this book’s chapter 2 is entitled: “The Uses and Abuses of Incarceration: Punishment, Dehumanization, and Slavery.” Despite the chapter’s provocative title, the treatment of the issues is very dispassionate and deliberately even-handed.
Sternbach, Adam. “Op-Ed: Investing in NJ’s Prison Labor Programs Is Investing in the Future.” NJ Spotlight, July 25, 2017. This article is the source of the ACLU’s Captive Labor report’s statistics for pay-scales in NJ prisons.
Taslitz, Andrew E. “Criminal Justice Successes and Failures of the Thirteenth Amendment.” In Alexander Tsesis, ed. The Promises of Liberty: The History and Contemporary Relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment. (N.Y.: Columbia Univ. Press, 2010), pp. 245-265.
Tsesis, Alexander. “Furthering American Freedom: Civil Rights and the Thirteenth Amendment.” Boston College Law Review 25 (2004): 386-390.
Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. (N.Y.: New York University Press, 2004).
Verité. “Work Behind Bars: Analysis of Prison Labor in the United States Based on International Labor Standards.” https://verite.org/work-behind-bars/
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. (London & N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
Western, Bruce. Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison. (N.Y.: Russell Sage Foundation, 2018). Western, a professor of criminal justice policy and sociology at Harvard Univ. is also the co-director of the Justice Lab at Columbia Univ. The book is based on interviews he conducted with inmates leaving Massachusetts State Prisons in the Boston area, following their experiences over the course of a year.
Whitman, James Q. Harsh Justice: America’s Solitary Place in the Liberal West. (N.Y. & Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005). It’s comparative legal history, analyzing the ways in which, and reasons for which, America’s punitive penal system operates in a much more punitive (non-rehabilitative) manner than those of other liberal-democratic Western nations.
Whitman, James Q. “Presumption of Innocence or Presumption of Mercy? Weighing Two Western Models of Justice.” Texas Law Review 94:5 (2016): 933-993.
Wilentz, Sean. “The Emancipator’s Vision: Was Abolition Intended as a Perpetuation of Slavery by Other Means?” The New York Review of Books, December 22, 2022.
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Worth Rises – blog –
https://worthrises.org/blogpost/understanding-the-many-forms-of-prison-labor
Amend the Thirteenth – website
https://amendthe13th.org/
SCR96 – SENATE STATE GOVERNMENT HEARING – October 19, 2020
ACR145 – ASSEMBLY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE HEARING – March 2021