Description: In this landmark book, Kevin B. Smith explains how the United States became the world's biggest jailer and examines the social, economic, and political costs we all bear as a result. If we're to improve civic cohesion, economic prospects, and political engagement, we must all address this problem.
Review Quotes:
"[The] Jailer's Reckoning is an extremely well-written book that takes a different look at a pressing issue." --Choice
"Kevin B. Smith's A Jailer's Reckoning should be inserted into the canon of carceral studies immediately! It is a deeply scholarly yet compellingly readable analysis of the 'world's greatest jailer' written with journalistic, sociological, statistical, and persuasive rigor. Using theorists and thinkers ranging from Charles Dickens and Emile Durkheim to Marie Gottschalk and Patrick Sharkey, Smith makes a compelling case that 'mass incarceration is feeding social dislocation and disassociation on a huge scale, and it's costing individual states billions in lost economic output...the stakes--for all of us--are huge.' This is necessary reading for anyone interested in the history, disparities, socioeconomic cost, and human effects of American prisons." --Dr. Ravi Shankar, Pushcart-prize winning author of Correctional "Kevin Smith deftly navigates numerous explanations for incarceration, avoiding heavy jargon to appeal to a broad audience. He employs robust empirical methods and evidence to make complex concepts accessible and engaging. It is rare to find such academic rigor fused with engaging and even entertaining prose. It is a must-read." --Daniel Hawes, Kent State University "How the hell did we get here? Americans under 50 could be forgiven for accepting mass incarceration as an inescapable fact of American life, seeing as it is all they have ever known, but they could not be more wrong. With the flair of a storyteller and the brain of social scientist, Kevin B. Smith exposes the rise of mass incarceration as an unprecedented and surely unsustainable historical aberration. Only by understanding this history can we reimagine a different future." --Shadd Maruna, Chair of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool; author of Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives "[If] you're interested in the causes of mass incarceration, what mass incarceration is costing the US, and at least a few potential suggestions on what might be looked into for potential solutions... this is actually a remarkable text, one that should supplant Alexander's [The New Jim Crow] as among the most cited in the field. Very much recommended." --BookAnon