E-Books
"Prisons make us safer" and 20 other myths about mass incarceration by Call Number: ebook, click for detailsISBN: 9780807029626Publication Date: 2021An accessible guide for activists, educators, and all who are interested in understanding how the prison system oppresses communities and harms individuals.
The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Call Number: Ebook and audiobook, click for accessISBN: 9781620971949Publication Date: 2016
Policing the Black Man (audio) by Call Number: Audio via overdrive; click for accessISBN: 9780525436614Publication Date: 2018-05-15Essays range from an explication of the historical roots of racism in the criminal justice system to an examination of modern-day police killings of unarmed black men.
Background Police, Police Violence, the Carceral System, "Defund the Police"
Articles and Other Resources
- Mapping Police Violence"This information has been meticulously sourced from the three largest, most comprehensive and impartial crowdsourced databases on police killings in the country: FatalEncounters.org, the U.S. Police Shootings Database and KilledbyPolice.net. We've also done extensive original research to further improve the quality and completeness of the data; searching social media, obituaries, criminal records databases, police reports and other sources to identify the race of 90 percent of all victims in the database."
- There's a growing call to defund the police. Here's what it meansCNN article By Scottie Andrew, Updated Wed June 17, 2020
- The Contemporary Juvenile Justice System (requires Oakton login)An overview of the juvenile justice system published in Contemporary world issues: Juvenile justice: a reference handbook. 2015
- Protests spread over police shootings. Police promised reforms. Every year, they still shoot and kill nearly 1,000 people.The Washington Post began tallying how many people were shot and killed by police. By the end of 2015, officers had fatally shot nearly 1,000 people, twice as many as ever documented in one year by the federal government...(Washington Post June 8 2020)
Media (Podcasts, Films, Videos)
Media: Podcasts, Films, Videos
- 13th (requires Netflix subscription)
The title of Ava DuVernay’s extraordinary and galvanizing documentary refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass criminalization and the sprawling American prison industry is laid out by DuVernay with bracing lucidity. With a potent mixture of archival footage and testimony from a dazzling array of activists, politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated women and men, DuVernay creates a work of grand historical synthesis.
Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man
On a fall afternoon in 1984, Dethorne Graham ran into a convenience store for a bottle of orange juice. Minutes later he was unconscious, injured, and in police handcuffs. In this episode, we explore a case that sent two Charlotte lawyers on a quest for true objectivity, and changed the face of policing in the US...what came out of that day in Charlotte would end up becoming one of the most important Supreme Court cases in our history when it comes to policing.
Listen below by clicking play or click the link below to download the podcast or transcript.
- Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - Mr. Graham and the Reasonable ManAudio and transcript for the above podcast.