While state and federal prisons like Attica and Alcatraz occupy a
central place in the national consciousness, most incarceration in
the United States occurs within the walls of local jails. In This
Is My Jail, Melanie D. Newport situates the late twentieth-century
escalation of mass incarceration in a longer history of racialized,
politically repressive jailing. Centering the political actions of
people until now overlooked-jailed people, wardens, corrections
officers, sheriffs, and the countless community members who battled
over the functions and impact of jails-Newport shows how local,
grassroots contestation shaped the rise of the carceral state. As
ground zero for struggles over criminal justice reform,
particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century, jails in
Chicago and Cook County were models for jailers and advocates
across the nation who aimed to redefine jails as institutions of
benevolent transformation. From a slave sale on the jail steps to
new jail buildings to electronic monitoring, from therapy to job
training, these efforts further criminalized jailed people and
diminished their capacity to organize for their civil rights. With
prisoners as famous as Al Capone, Dick Gregory, and Harold
Washington, and a place in culture ranging from Upton Sinclair's
The Jungle to B. B. King's Live in Cook County Jail, This Is My
Jail places jails at the heart of twentieth-century urban life and
politics. As a sweeping history of urban incarceration, This Is My
Jail shows that jails are critical sites of urban inequality that
sustain the racist actions of the police and judges and exacerbate
the harms wrought by housing discrimination, segregated schools,
and inaccessible health care. Structured by liberal anti-Blackness
and legacies of violence, today's jails reflect longstanding local
commitments to the unfreedom of poor people of color.
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