Fleeing the social and political turmoil spawned by the Mexican Revolution, massive numbers of Mexican immigrants entered the southwestern United States in the early decades of the twentieth century. But instead of finding refuge, many encountered harsh, anti-Mexican attitudes and violence from an Anglo population frightened by the influx of foreigners and angered by anti-American sentiments in Mexico.

This book examines the response of Mexican immigrants to Anglo American prejudice and violence early in the twentieth century. Drawing on archival sources from both sides of the border, Arturo Rosales traces the rise of "México Lindo" nationalism and the efforts of Mexican consuls to help poor Mexican immigrants defend themselves against abuses and flagrant civil rights violations by Anglo citizens, police, and the U.S. judicial system. This research illuminates a dark era in which civilian and police brutality, prejudice in the courtroom, and disproportionate arrest, conviction, and capital punishment rates too often characterized justice for Mexican Americans.

The United States has both the largest, most expensive, and most powerful military and the largest, most expensive, and most punitive carceral system in the history of the world. Since the American War in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of veterans have been incarcerated after their military service.

Identifying the previously unrecognized connections between American wars and mass incarceration, Prisoners after War reaches across lines of race, class, and gender to record the untold history of incarcerated veterans over the past six decades. Having conducted dozens of oral history interviews, Jason A. Higgins traces the lifelong effects of war, inequality, disability, and mental illness, and explores why hundreds of thousands of veterans, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, were caught up in the carceral system. This original study tells an intergenerational history of state-sanctioned violence, punishment, and inequality, but its pages also resonate with stories of survival and redemption, revealing future possibilities for reform and reparative justice.

A CounterPunch Best Book of the Year
A Lone Star Policy Institute Recommended Book

“If you care, as I do, about disrupting the perverse politics of criminal justice, there is no better place to start than Prisoners of Politics.”
—James Forman, Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The social consequences of this fact—recycling people who commit crimes through an overwhelmed system and creating a growing class of permanently criminalized citizens—are devastating. A leading criminal justice reformer who has successfully rewritten sentencing guidelines, Rachel Barkow argues that we would be safer, and have fewer people in prison, if we relied more on expertise and evidence and worried less about being “tough on crime.” A groundbreaking work that is transforming our national conversation on crime and punishment, Prisoners of Politics shows how problematic it is to base criminal justice policy on the whims of the electorate and argues for an overdue shift that could upend our prison problem and make America a more equitable society.

“A critically important exploration of the political dynamics that have made us one of the most punitive societies in human history. A must-read by one of our most thoughtful scholars of crime and punishment.”
—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy

“Barkow’s analysis suggests that it is not enough to slash police budgets if we want to ensure lasting reform. We also need to find ways to insulate the process from political winds.”
—David Cole, New York Review of Books

“A cogent and provocative argument about how to achieve true institutional reform and fix our broken system.”
—Emily Bazelon, author of Charged

The increasing reliance on private security services raises questions about the effects of privatization on the quality of public police forces, particularly in high-crime, low-income areas. In an effective pro-and-con format, two experts on policing offer two strikingly different perspectives on this trend towards privatization. In the process, they provide an unusually thoughtful discussion of the origins of both the public police and the private security sectors, the forces behind the recent growth of private security operations, and the risks to public safety posed by privatization.

In his critique of privatization, Peter K. Manning focuses on issues of free market theory and management practices such as Total Quality Management that he believes are harmful to the traditional police mandate to control crime. He questions the appropriateness of strategies that emphasize service to consumers. For Brian Forst, the free market paradigm and economic incentives do not carry the same stigma. He argues that neither public nor private policing should have a monopoly on law enforcement activities, and he predicts an even more varied mix of public and private police activities than are currently available.

Following the two main sections of the book, each author assesses the other's contribution, reflecting on not just their points of departure but also on the areas in which they agree. The breadth and depth of the discussion makes this book essential for both scholars and practitioners interested in policing generally and privatization in particular.