Rethinking the American Prison Movement

Rethinking the American Prison Movement provides a short, accessible overview of the transformational and ongoing struggles against America's prison system. Dan Berger and Toussaint Losier show that prisoners have used strikes, lawsuits, uprisings, writings, and diverse coalitions with free-world allies to challenge prison conditions and other kinds of inequality. From the forced labor camps of the nineteenth century to the rebellious protests of the 1960s and 1970s to the rise of mass incarceration and its discontents, Rethinking the American Prison Movement is invaluable to anyone interested in the history of American prisons and the struggles for justice still echoing in the present day.

"From the penitentiaries and workhouses of the nineteenth century to the current prison-industrial complex, the United States has been a world leader in incarceration, discipline, and punishment. Dan Berger and Toussaint Losier examine the social movements that rose to reform or resist the American prison system, with attention to the marginalized activists and their allies who fought for justice both inside and beyond prison walls. This is a necessary and important book." - Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North