oupacademic:

The United States holds the world’s largest
prison population, caging more humans than any other nation on earth. In a
situation that is not only internationally unparalleled but also historically
unprecedented, every day more than 2 million people are barred somewhere within
this nation’s vast archipelago of prisons, jails, and immigrant detention
centers. Another 7.2 million are on probation, on parole, or under a
deportation order.

–

Kelly Lytle Hernández, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and Heather Ann Thompson in “Introduction:
Constructing the Carceral State”

The Journal of American History explores
the nature of incarceration in
the US and the history of the carceral state in a new
special issue. We’ve put together a reading list of articles:

• “’A War within Our Own
  Boundaries’: Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the Rise of the Carceral State”
  by Elizabeth Hinton
• “African American Women,
  Mass Incarceration, and the Politics of Protection” by Kali Nicole Gross
• “Queer Law and Order: Sex,
  Criminality, and Policing in the Late Twentieth Century United States” by
  Timothy Stewart-Winter
• “Impossible Criminals: The
  Suburban Imperatives of America’s War on Drugs” by Matthew D. Lassiter

Browse the
rest of the issue, freely accessible now.

Image Credit: “Prison Cell” by Alexandre Vanier. Public Domain via Pixabay.