How Mass Incarceration Underdevelops Latino Communities (original) (raw)

U.S. Latinos and Criminal Injustice (Michigan State University Press 2015)

17 Pages Posted: 8 Apr 2015

Date Written: April 2, 2015

Abstract

In criminal justice scholarship, there is an abundance of research that charts the monumental growth of American prisons in the post–civil rights era. Scholars have labeled this punitive posture by a host of terms, perhaps most prominently mass incarceration or mass imprisonment. Other monikers include “hyper-incarceration,” “warehousing,” “prison industrial complex,” and “incarceration nation.” During this period, prison rates soared and in due time distinguished the country with the highest rate of incarceration and largest prison population in the world. The shift to incarceration, however, was not evenly spread among American society, but rather became the burden of underclass ethnic communities. While the darkening of American prisons has been well told, little research has focused on the implications for communities to which inmates return. Even less research focuses on Latino communities. This chapter contributes by offering a comprehensive picture of how the penal system not only arrests the development of Latino communities, but affirmatively works to hinder them.

Keywords: Latinos, Criminal Justice, Prisons, Collateral Consequences, LFOs

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

SpearIt, How Mass Incarceration Underdevelops Latino Communities (April 2, 2015). U.S. Latinos and Criminal Injustice (Michigan State University Press 2015), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2589112