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Carceral Capitalism weaves together autobiographical meditations, poetry and critical theory to produce a compelling exploration of the current dominance in the US of the state's prison and police system. Jackie Wang is a poet, writer and PhD candidate at Harvard University in African and African American studies. Her theoretical approach, however, is grounded in her personal stake; her brother, one year her senior, was sentenced to Juvenile Life Without Parole at the age of 17. This familial connection makes it impossible for Wang to ignore the realities of an institution deeply entrenched in racism and the devastating effects that the carceral system has on everyone in its orbit. Carceral Capitalism demonstrates the necessity of the prison abolitionist movement and offers an alternative to the current system.
The prison abolitionist movement seeks to remove the prison-industrial complex from our physical and ideological landscape. Rather than make society safer, the prisonindustrial complex has been built to oppress marginalised communities, in particular people of colour and of low socioeconomic status. The movement was sparked by the War on Drugs in the 1980s, which saw an intensification of draconian drug laws that targeted young black men in particular and consequently gave rise to racialised mass incarceration....