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“Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire” by Robert Perkinson


In this thought-provoking analysis, Perkinson provides a historical account tracing what he describes as Texas’ various failed approaches to crime control. He helps us to understand how racism and politics, rather than crime control has been at the heart of governing prisons. Simply put, Perkinson argues that America has moved from “the age of slavery to the age of incarceration,” which continues to plague our society today. The state of Texas incarcerates more people than Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands combined. Currently, there are approximately 2.4 million persons incarcerated in the U.S. and our nation spends $212 billion a year on law enforcement, courts and prisons combined. Between 1965 and 2000 the number of prisoners in the U.S. increased over 600 percent; in Texas the increase in incarcerations was twice that. However, despite its level of spending and high incarceration rate, Texans still have a crime rate that is 24% higher than the national average.

According to Perkinson, race and slavery are the forces that shaped the Texas penal system. At its inception, the Texas prison system was reserved for whites and was never intended for free blacks or slaves-their punishment was death. Nevertheless, the abolition of slavery in 1865 left a class of black people who had little more than a fragile sense of freedom and Texas politicians desperate to maintain power over their former slaves. In fact, from 1865 to 1874 Texas led the nation in railroad construction, largely accomplished with convict labor. While most states had penal expenses, Texas made over $300,000 in profits by the 1880s.

Following the Civil Rights Movement’s advances in providing equal protection under the law and desegregation came tougher drug policies, and crackdowns on crime that consciously or not, made African Americans a target. Since that period, the disparity between black and white incarceration rates has nearly doubled and remains a problem that plagues us today. Visit www.texastough.com.
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