Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective

Michael Hallett

2006

University of Illinois Press

Click on the book image to read the Foreword.

Criminologists across the political spectrum understand that the American prison apparatus is greatly influenced by political and commercial activities occurring outside the traditional boundaries of criminal justice. In Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective, Michael Hallett offers a concise and compelling account of how race (and class) continues to shape the march toward greater investment in imprisonment. As Hallett demonstrates convincingly, people of color (and the poor) serve as raw material for a prison industry that produces a generous windfall for private corrections firms.

• Michael Welch, Rutgers University, author of Ironies of Imprisonment.

 Hallett explores the issue of prison privatization in broad historical and social context.  He ties it to the long-standing role of entrepreneurs in shaping Anglo-American policies on punishment, the history of slavery and race relations in the American South, race, class, and crime, and the long history of sweetheart deals that funnel public monies to American capitalists.  In doing all this, Hallett writes with a passion that is in the best tradition of American muckraking scholarship.

• Malcolm M. Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Dean's Chair Professor of Law, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall), author of The Process is the Punishment; Editor-in-Chief, Punishment & Society.

Regardless of one's theoretical leaning, this is a must-read book for all persons interested in criminology, penology, race and ethnicity, or criminal justice in general.

• Marvin D. Free, Jr., Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Editor, Racial Issues in Criminal Justice: The Case of African Americans (Praeger 2004).

Several books and scores of articles analyzed and dealt with the various aspects of this privatization trend. Michael Hallett in his book "Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective" focuses on the social, economic and political connections between the increasing proportion of poor minority inmates and the entrance of private for-profit companies into the prison business. This work by dealing with an aspect of privatization that hitherto was not dealt with makes a valuable contribution to the study of private prisons.

• David Shichor, Author (1995) Punishment for Profit: Private Prisons/Public Concerns.  London: Sage Publications.