Carceral Con

"From the beginning, evasions, hedging, deceptive rhetoric, trap doors, backroom reversals, hidden agendas, and slippery 'success' indicators have been built into the misleading and false promises of sweeping criminal justice reform. In the wake of the 2020 protests of racist structural violence, many people seek to better understand why contemporary reforms haven't produced more justice, especially justice for Black people. This book tells the story of the smoke-and-mirrors nature of those reform agendas and their ongoing failures to dismantle the entwined harms of structural racism and poverty so foundational to the criminal legal system. Carceral Con argues that it is not possible to fully grasp the implications of various reforms without inquiring more deeply into multiple forms of structural inequality and violence that are foundational to the United States and its systems of policing and carceral control. That is to say, racial, gendered, economic, and ableist hierarchies and discrimination are structured into the everyday workings of political, legal, and economic systems. Utilizing an abolitionist lens, this book asks readers to think differently about public safety, commun