CAPPS is joining witCaughth the Ford School of Public Policy and Michigan State University to host two guest lectures by Prof. Marie Gottschalk, the widely acclaimed author of “Caught: The prison state and the lockdown of American politics”. Professor Gottschalk is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. A former editor and journalist, she was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration. More information about these events will be coming soon but save these times and dates: 4 PM, Wednesday, April 13, Ford School of Public Policy, Annenberg Auditorium, Ann Arbor; 2 PM, Thursday, April 14, Michigan State University College of Law, East Lansing.

Princton University press, writes “The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders today, yet reforms to reduce the number of people in U.S. jails and prisons have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, a carceral state has sprouted in the shadows of mass imprisonment, extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It includes not only the country’s vast archipelago of jails and prisons but also the growing range of penal punishments and controls that lie in the never-never land between prison and full citizenship, from probation and parole to immigrant detention, felon disenfranchisement, and extensive lifetime restrictions on sex offenders. As it sunders families and communities and reworks conceptions of democracy, rights, and citizenship, this ever-widening carceral state poses a formidable political and social challenge.

In this book, Marie Gottschalk examines why the carceral state, with its growing number of outcasts, remains so tenacious in the United States. She analyzes the shortcomings of the two dominant penal reform strategies—one focused on addressing racial disparities, the other on seeking bipartisan, race-neutral solutions centered on reentry, justice reinvestment, and reducing recidivism.

In this bracing appraisal of the politics of penal reform, Gottschalk exposes the broader pathologies in American politics that are preventing the country from solving its most pressing problems, including the stranglehold that neoliberalism exerts on public policy. She concludes by sketching out a promising alternative path to begin dismantling the carceral state.”

 

What the reviewers are saying about Caught:“Marie Gottschalk’s commanding and disturbing Caught is our best guide to the political decisions and public policies that have created the carceral state and our present immobility on the issue of crime and its punishment. Caught is that relatively rare academic book that hopes to move both public debate and policy.”–Michael Meranze, Los Angeles Review of Books“[D]evastatingly persuasive. . . . Caught proves not only an authoritative companion to the criminal justice system crises you know, but also a thorough compendium of the crises you’ve never even considered.”–Stephen Lurie, Los Angeles Review of Books

Watch for more information about this event in CAPPS Updates and on this website.