Please select one of the sessions from the drop-down menu in order to view course materials.
- What is the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)? An overview of the California political economy, prison construction as a “development” strategy, prison labor and unions. The War on Drugs.
- The Cultural Impacts of Mass Incarceration. Social and economic effects of the PIC on targeted communities and families. Emotional and psychological costs of mass incarceration.
- Immigrant Detention. Examining the explosive rate of immigrant detention (429,000 annually in 2011, according to the ACLU) alongside a brief discussion of Guatanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition.
- Solitary Confinement, Life Sentences and Death Row. Race discrimination in sentencing trends. Does solitary confinement make either society or prison populations safer?
- How Gender Structures the Prison System. Bringing feminist and queer theory to bear on the sex-segregated prison system. The construction of “prison masculinities.”
- Educate to Incarcerate. The intersection of school discipline and juvenile detention. The school-to-prison pipeline and profiling youth culture. Growing up with parents in prison.