Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis
by Christian Parenti
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Book Summary Information
Author: Christian ParentiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2000-10
ISBN: 1859843034
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Verso
Book Reviews of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis
Book Review: Scary look at the militarisation of US law enforcement
Summary: 4 Stars
Superb reporting from the frontline of paramilitary policing - US style. This is a scary and thought-provoking book, marred only by some sixth-form Marxist analysis that grates increasingly as the book goes on. Parenti is at his best when documenting America's frightening plunge into zero tolerance-fixated social control. The 1980s and 1990s - he argues - have been characterised by increasingly aggressive and militaristic law enforcement. The authorities have responded to mounting crime levels by pouring funds into punitive and racist policing strategies. Inner city cops, in the name of "quality of life" policing, have victimised the poor and dark-skinned, while the growing tendency for every town - no matter how small - to have its own paramilitary SWAT team, has unleashed an unparalleled level of state violence on America's own citizens. Meanwhile the country's overcrowded jails, in their almost Medieval savagery, have come to abandon rehabilitation in favour of retribution on a massive scale. Where the book goes wrong is in its increasingly tedious and baffling theoretical posturing. Parenti, in true Marxist fashion, sees America's law and order crisis as capitalism's last throw of the dice - as profits plunge big business thrashes about for scapegoats. All this is crowned with a bit of Foucault - we may think we are free, but the state is merely pursuing its strategies of dominance and control through more subtle means. Actually, corporate profits have been rising throughout the 1990s. And if capitalism is looking to flourish, creating a dangerous and marginalised underclass in its own backyard is not the best environment to create. Parenti has almost nothing to say on the drug epidemic, which is the main reason the streets of the US have become a battleground. He is also quiet about the success of zero tolerance in Giuliani's New York - the plunging murder rate in particular - only its (undeniable) downside. All in all a gripping and well researched, though deeply flawed, book.
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