This course explores the history and effects of the United States’ mass incarceration crisis. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. And people of color make up a highly disproportionate number of the over 2 million individuals incarcerated in the U.S. today. Beginning with slavery and continuing through the rise of prisons, debt peonage, Jim Crow, and the Black Lives Matter movement, the course will explore how efforts to police, detain, and control black bodies have been at the center of U.S. law and legal practice since the nation’s founding. At the same time, we will compare and contrast how race, gender, and sexual orientation have been policed, controlled, and shaped through incarceration practices throughout U.S. history.
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