At the cross: race, religion, and citizenship in the politics of the death penalty

Curing systemic inequalities in the criminal justice system is the unfinished business of the Civil Rights movement. No part of that system highlights this truth more than the current implementation of the death penalty. The findings of this research demonstrate that the racial inequity in the meting out of death sentences has legal and political externalities that move beyond individual defendants to larger numbers of African Americans. This book looks at the meaning of the death penalty to and for African Americans

Curing systemic inequalities in the criminal justice system is the unfinished business of the Civil Rights movement. No part of that system highlights this truth more than the current implementation of the death penalty. The findings of this research demonstrate that the racial inequity in the meting out of death sentences has legal and political externalities that move beyond individual defendants to larger numbers of African Americans. This book looks at the meaning of the death penalty to and for African Americans.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Part I. Elements of Social Death -- 1. Crossing the Abyss: The Study of Social Death -- 2. Natal Alienation -- 3. Humiliation -- Part II. Method and a History of Social Death -- 4. Dissemblance and Creativity: Toward a Methodology for Studying State Violence -- 5. Racism, Prison, and the Legacies of Slavery -- 6. The Birth of the Penitentiary -- Part III. Abolition Democracy -- 7. "Doesn't Everyone Know Someone in Prison or on Parole?" -- 8. Spirit Murder: Reentry, Dispossession, and Enduring Stigma -- 9. States of Grace: Social Life against Social Death -- 10. Conclusion: Failure and Abolition Democracy -- Notes -- References -- Index -- About the Author

Curing systemic inequalities in the criminal justice system is the unfinished business of the Civil Rights movement. At the Cross tells a story of the relationship between the death penalty and race in American politics and how the legal and political impact of this form of punishment move beyond individual black defendants to larger numbers of African Americans.

A compelling blend of solidarity, civil rights activism, and social research, Prison and Social Death offers a unique look at the American prison and the excessive and unnecessary damage it inflicts on convicts and parolees. Joshua M. Price documents the "social death" that convicts suffer while incarcerated and afterward, drawing upon hundreds of often harrowing interviews conducted with prisoners, parolees, and their families.