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NYU Reads

A selection of resources for engaging with the NYU Reads books.

Prisons and Policing

"Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened in the United States every ten days...Incarceration became the answer to everything—health care problems like drug addiction, poverty that had led someone to write a bad check, child behavioral disorders, managing the mentally disabled poor, even immigration issues generated responses from legislators that involved sending people to prison."  Just Mercy, Chapter 14

Though Just Mercy focuses mostly on the issues of the carceral system in the Southern United States, these issues can be examined nationally and  globally. These resources provide information on the issues of prisons and policing from multiple perspectives. Subjects include mass incarceration, the prison industrial complex, and inequalities in who is most affected by policing and criminal justice.

Essays & Articles

Print Books & eBooks

Print Books

eBooks

“The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.” - Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

Further Reading

Videos