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We all know that orange is the new black and mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow, but how much do we actually know about the structure, goals, and impact of our criminal justice system? Understanding Mass Incarceration offers the first comprehensive overview of the incarceration apparatus put in place by the world's largest jailer: the United States. Drawing on a growing body of academic and professional work, Understanding Mass Incarceration describes in plain English the many competing theories of criminal justice-from rehabilitation to retribution, from restorative justice to justice reinvestment. In a lively and accessible style, author James Kilgore illuminates the difference between prisons and jails, probation and parole, laying out key concepts and policies such as the War on Drugs, broken windows policing, three-strikes sentencing, the school-to-prison pipeline, recidivism, and prison privatization. Informed by the crucial lenses of race and gender, he addresses issues typically omitted from the discussion: the rapidly increasing incarceration of women, Latinos, and transgender people; the growing imprisonment of immigrants; and the devastating impact of mass incarceration on communities. Both field guide and primer, Understanding Mass Incarceration will be an essential resource for those engaged in criminal justice activism as well as those new to the subject.

Michelle Alexander's critical analysis of the US criminal justice system contained in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness has received extraordinary critical and popular acclaim. Her main thesis, that mass incarceration constitutes a new system of racial oppression akin to slavery and the original Jim Crow, has had a profound impact on mainstream and academic framing of criminal justice issues. This article outlines her main thesis, then builds on and critiques her work by interrogating her notion of 'racial caste', updating her statistical breakdown of the racial demographics of the incarcerated population, and outlining the constituencies and organizations which are essential to the building of a social movement to reverse the mass incarceration process.

I spent a year on an ankle bracelet as a condition of my parole. For me and for most of the 150,000 to 200,000 people who go through each day with this technology strapped to their ankles, claims that electronic monitoring as a sort of panacea for the problems in our prison system—a low-cost, technologically smart way to ameliorate state budget crises, ensure public safety, and give "criminals" a chance to put their life back together.

I'm at least in agreement with half of that win-win scenario. An increase in the use of EM will produce some winners. Let's take, for example, BI Incorporated, the largest provider of ankle bracelets and monitoring programs in the United States. In 2009, BI signed a five-year contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for $372 million to provide ankle bracelets for 27,000 people awaiting immigration hearings. Clearly, a winner in this game.

What I'm not so sure about is the other side of the equation, those who actually walk around with that black box on their leg, apart from the aforementioned stars. For Paris and Lindsay, GPS jewelry provides a get-out-of-jail-free ticket, not counting the lawyers' fees, of course. But those are the rich and famous. They're different from the rest of us—they have more money.

By now, most leftists and much of mainstream America are familiar with the story of what Representative Donna Edwards calls "the greatest wealth transfer in the history of American kind if not of mankind." They are not so familiar with the latest "great migration," the forced transfer of millions of men (and more and more women) of color out of their communities and into prisons.

Ankle bracelets are almost fashionable these days. Martha Stewart wore one on her television show. Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton may have converted them into a rite of passage for inebriated starlets. In fact, Chanel's 2008 spring show featured ankle pouches shaped like Lindsay's bracelet in bright yellow, prompting outrage from a few law-and-order-oriented fashionistas. But ankle bracelets are not about glamour. I spent a year on an ankle bracelet as a condition of my parole. For me and for most of the 150,000 to 200,000 people who go through each day with this technology strapped to their ankles, the media portrayals of electronic monitoring ("EM" as researchers and some parole officers call it) fail to resonate. Even further off the mark are claims from commercial promoters and policy analysts, such as UCLA's Mark Kleiman, who assure us that with EM "you can fully punish him [a convicted person] for what he did in the past and prevent him from what he might do in the future -- without paying his room and board." Kleiman and others see electronic monitoring as a sort of panacea for the problems in our prison system -- a low-cost, technologically smart way to ameliorate state budget crises, ensure public safety, and give "criminals" a chance to put their life back together. This marketing talk makes it all sound like that unattainable cliche -- a win-win situation. Adapted from the source document.