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alleerose 's review for:
Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment
by Angela J. Davis
Thanks to Gus for sending me an advance copy! I feel like such an insider. Sorry for the review I'm about to leave...
Maybe it's because I'm already pretty immersed in this area of work, but this book had very little to offer in terms of any new or interesting insights or analysis, and it suffered from a severe lack of imagination. As always in an essay collection there are highlights and lowlights but really the only highlight of this book was Bryan Stevenson's piece tracing how capital punishment evolved out of extrajudicial lynchings in the early 20th century. The rest of the book ranged from ho hum to borderline infuriating in its refusal to dig past surface level analysis. Like, did you know implicit bias is a thing?! Did you know courts set a high bar for discrimination claims?! Did you know prosecutors have a lot of discretion and use it in racially biased ways?! I guess perhaps because I've basically taken a class on each one of those topics I was like DUHHH let's get somewhere innovative now. But the only solutions the authors had were minor tweaks and reforms. Sure, better training of the police is toootally going to eradicate implicit bias. What about instead questioning the very function and role of the police? But this is not a book that is going to go there. Perhaps the target audience is the newly woke who are just now hearing about this 'mass incarceration' thing and it will give them a couple great talking points for the water cooler.
Maybe it's because I'm already pretty immersed in this area of work, but this book had very little to offer in terms of any new or interesting insights or analysis, and it suffered from a severe lack of imagination. As always in an essay collection there are highlights and lowlights but really the only highlight of this book was Bryan Stevenson's piece tracing how capital punishment evolved out of extrajudicial lynchings in the early 20th century. The rest of the book ranged from ho hum to borderline infuriating in its refusal to dig past surface level analysis. Like, did you know implicit bias is a thing?! Did you know courts set a high bar for discrimination claims?! Did you know prosecutors have a lot of discretion and use it in racially biased ways?! I guess perhaps because I've basically taken a class on each one of those topics I was like DUHHH let's get somewhere innovative now. But the only solutions the authors had were minor tweaks and reforms. Sure, better training of the police is toootally going to eradicate implicit bias. What about instead questioning the very function and role of the police? But this is not a book that is going to go there. Perhaps the target audience is the newly woke who are just now hearing about this 'mass incarceration' thing and it will give them a couple great talking points for the water cooler.