rberdan 's review for:

Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present by Robyn Maynard

5.0

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

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This book was jam-packed with information from problems with policing in general to the school to prison pipeline to the child welfare system and the racist underpinnings of anti-sex-work laws (which was particularly interesting to me). It was great to learn more about the Canadian context, which is so often overshadowed by US stats and often erroneously held up as better than the situation in the US. Although centring Black lives, the book regularly acknowledges the relationship between anti-Blackness and colonialism, with analysis of the relationship between anti-immigration and laws/ways of policing that disproportionately harm Black communities, and regular acknowledgment of the gross overpolicing and other colonial violence against First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. This is a book I could see myself referencing many times over.