PRISON BY ANY OTHER NAME.

AuthorBrown, Elizabeth Nolan

"Ending mass incarceration is only the beginning," write journalists Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law in Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms. The book delves into the many ways Americans are surveilled, separated from their communities, punished, and controlled by "prison alternatives" like probation, house arrest with electronic monitoring, mandatory drug treatment, and prostitution "diversion" programs. It also covers supposedly preventive measures (such as involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations and the sex offender registry) and state "care" systems such as child protective services.

As a primer on the deep reach of our prison industrial complex and a roadmap for how to reform the reforms, the book works well. It's less persuasive in its hostility toward incremental reformers; the authors seem to believe that abolishing...

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