Black Behind Bars: The Rise of the Prison-Industrial Complex

Catalog description

In recent decades, the prison population in the United States has quadrupled to include nearly 2.5 million incarcerated people, making the United States host to the largest prison population in the world. The effects are felt perhaps nowhere more than among African Americans who now comprise 13% of the United States population, but nearly half of the country’s prison population. More broadly, confinement and imprisonment have long been major themes in African American History-from capture in Africa, into slave ships, on plantations; and, more recently, in various forms of forced and coerced labor. In this course, we will investigate the history and significance of the Prison Industrial Complex, a complex web of governmental, financial, and cultural interests that have adopted large scale incarceration as the primary solution to a wide range of economic, social, and political problems. This course challenges students to think about the consequences of living in a modern society that celebrates the virtues of freedom and capitalism even as it makes prison an ever permanent and profitable part of the American landscape.