Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling

If you are interested in issues regarding the industrial prison complex, racial inequity in sentencing, and deterrence vs. reform, this book is for you. This is the third incarnation of Mauer’s book, Race to Incarcerate, first published in 1999, updated and re-released in 2006, and now in graphic novel format. With unflinching black and white images and comic-style word boxes and speech bubbles, the book’s central points and data sets are condensed to briefly explain the history and politics resulting in the United States’ dubious position as the country with the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Among other surprising facts in Race to Incarcerate—our modern penitentiary system was devised by the Quakers for the kind show more and humane reformation of criminals.

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Graphic realization of Mauer's tome on the inherent racism and classism of the US justice and penal systems. Traces the history of prison and incarceration... from a notion of penance > reform > punishment. Dscusses the US "war on crime", "the war on drugs," "mandatory sentencing" and "three strikes" laws. According to this book, our justice system is stacked against the poor and brown-skinned minorities, too, leading to more arrests, court time, and subsequent jailing. All political stripes are implicated in the desire to appear "tough on crime", including Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans and Democrats. Imprisonment not only hurts the person behind bars, it also impacts the families left behind. It's a visually grabbing book and show more the statistics are even more disturbing. show less

on the content of the original race to incarcerate book--very liberal. very shallow, not actually that critical. good collection of data, but poor framing and analysis of it; but its probably good enough at somewhat educating a wide, varied audience

this is a decent sequential adaptation of the original, for the most part. i think the expressive symbolism of the illustration, and the general tones and emotions evoked by the graphics, were excellent and demonstrated the strength of the medium

but the visual artist, like author of the original, did not do too well with the data. the info graphics were cluttered, scattered, with no flow or direction, little coherence, never interpreting the data, rarely reinforcing it, and often confusing it show more for the reader

but i suppose this, like the original, will probably be good enough at somewhat educating a wide, varied audience show less