Jarrod Shanahan is an associate professor of criminal justice at Governors State University and the author of Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage and other books.
Nine members of the “Prairieland 19,” anti-ICE protesters in Texas who the Trump administration is dubiously accusing of domestic terrorism, are going on trial this week. The case is a test for how easily Trump might criminalize dissent going forward.
Meek Mill is finally free. But his case, depicted in a new Amazon docuseries, shows the urgent need to challenge the criminalization of poverty and the class society that jailed him in the first place.
US prisons are horrific — so horrific, in fact, that a former top physician at Rikers Island insists in a new book that we treat incarceration itself as a cause of harm to the imprisoned.
David Ranney was part of the wave of US revolutionaries who went into factories in the 1970s to organize workers. In an interview, he discusses his new book about those explosive years — and the pitched battles his coworkers waged against both their corrupt union and the company.
The Showtime mini-series Escape at Dannemora is a brutal portrait of the quintessential American prison town — where dehumanization reigns, no matter which side of the wall you’re on.
Janus represents a turn from conciliation with public-sector unions towards pure repression.
The remake of Death Wish is a failure — because the law-and-order politics animating the original film triumphed long ago.