Synopses & Reviews
"Accessible and comprehensive,
Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities deleves into the most pressing legal issue of prisoner reentry. . . . Thompson provides a much needed look at this dire social issue through an expert legal lens. This is an important book and I highly recommend it to legal scholars, policy makers, criminologists, and concerned citizens."
Joan Petersilia, author of When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry
In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, African Americans made up approximately twelve percent of the U.S. population but close to forty percent of the U.S. prison population. This shocking disparity is due, in part, to the introduction of tough sentencing laws passed in the 1990s, some in response to the widespread use of crack cocaine, which was sold and used by far more black than white Americans. Now, in the latter half of the decade, the nation is in the midst of the largest multi-year discharge of prisoners in its history. What is likely to happen to these ex-offenders? In Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities, Anthony C. Thompson looks for the answer.
Not surprisingly, most African Americans released from prison return to their home communities. However, as Thompson reports, many of these communities are strugglingmany are in dire need of health care, adequate and affordable housing, drug treatment programs, social services, and jobs. And ex-offenders have even greater needs than other residents of these strained communities. Most of those who were drug addicts have not received treatment. Nor, for the most part, have they received any useful vocational training. When viewed in its totality, Thompson writes, this is a recipe for disaster. At this time, nearly half of all ex-offenders return to prison within three years and that percentage could easily increase in the years ahead.
For Thompson, any discussion of ex-offender reentry is, de facto, a question of race. After laying out the troubling statistics, he identifies the equally troubling ways in which media and politics have contributed to the problem, especially through stereotyping and racial bias. He reports on the growing number of black women being sent to prison and looks at governmental responses to reentry, including the shifting roles of parole officers and the use of courts in reintegrating ex-inmates into communities. Well aware of the potential consequences if this country fails to act, Thompson concludes with concrete, realizable ideas of how our policies could, and should, change.
Review
“Accessible and comprehensive, Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities delves into the most pressing legal issue of prisoner reentry. . . . Thompson provides a much needed look at this dire social issue through an expert legal lens. This is an important book and I highly recommend it to legal scholars, policy makers, criminologists, and concerned citizens.”
-Joan Petersilia,author of When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry
Review
“Thompson provides a compelling argument that we cannot understand reentry, and indeed criminal justice policy broadly, without analyzing its racial dimensions. He also provides us with a clear road map that helps us to access the state of reentry today, and what we need to do politically and programatically to develop a system that is committed to both public safety and racial fairness.”
-Marc Mauer,Executive Director, The Sentencing Project
Review
“Three recent books by scholars who happen to be black men eloquently attest to these broader effects of the racial disparities in our criminal justice system. . . . For New York University law professor Anthony Thompson, author of Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities: Reentry, Race, and Politics, it is critical that we examine ‘the pervasive interplay of race, power, and politics that infuse and confuse our attitudes about crime. ”
-New York Review of Books,
Review
“The record size of the U.S. prison population in recent years has received some attention, and it is well known that young men of color are greatly overrepresented in this prison population. The inevitable release annually of hundreds of thousands of these prisoners very disproportionately into inner-city minority communities has been relatively little discussed. In this book, NYU law professor Thompson explores in considerable depth the devastating impact of this mass influx on these communities, and the deeply disturbing lack of adequate programs and appropriate forms of assistance to constructively reintegrate former prisoners back into such communities.”
-Choice,
Review
“Three recent books by scholars who happen to be black men eloquently attest to these broader effects of the racial disparities in our criminal justice system. . . . For New York University law professor Anthony Thompson, author of Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities: Reentry, Race, and Politics, it is critical that we examine ‘the pervasive interplay of race, power, and politics that infuse and confuse our attitudes about crime.’ ”
“Every member of the Obama administration, of Congress, and of state legislatures should read, study, and reflect upon Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities. A detailed account of how overcriminalization and overincarceration have destroyed individuals, families, and communities, Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities is scrupulously researched and footnoted.”
“The record size of the U.S. prison population in recent years has received some attention, and it is well known that young men of color are greatly overrepresented in this prison population. The inevitable release annually of hundreds of thousands of these prisoners very disproportionately into inner-city minority communities has been relatively little discussed. In this book, NYU law professor Thompson explores in considerable depth the devastating impact of this mass influx on these communities, and the deeply disturbing lack of adequate programs and appropriate forms of assistance to constructively reintegrate former prisoners back into such communities.”
“Accessible and comprehensive, Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities delves into the most pressing legal issue of prisoner reentry. . . . Thompson provides a much needed look at this dire social issue through an expert legal lens. This is an important book and I highly recommend it to legal scholars, policy makers, criminologists, and concerned citizens.”
“Thompson provides a compelling argument that we cannot understand reentry, and indeed criminal justice policy broadly, without analyzing its racial dimensions. He also provides us with a clear road map that helps us to access the state of reentry today, and what we need to do politically and programatically to develop a system that is committed to both public safety and racial fairness.”
Review
“Every member of the Obama administration, of Congress, and of state legislatures should read, study, and reflect upon Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities. A detailed account of how overcriminalization and overincarceration have destroyed individuals, families, and communities, Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities is scrupulously researched and footnoted.”
-The Federal Lawyer,
Review
Praise for the original edition:
“Every teacher of graduate students in Whitman and American literature in general will wish to have this edition in his university and perhaps home library.”
-American Literature,
Synopsis
In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century,African Americans made up approximately twelve percent ofthe United States population but close to forty percent of the United States prison population. Now, in the latter half of the decade, the nation is in the midst of the largest multi-year discharge of prisoners in its history. In
Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities, Anthony C. Thompson discusses what is likely to happen to these ex-offenders and why.
For Thompson, any discussion of ex-offender reentry is, de facto, a question of race. After laying out the statistics, he identifies the ways in which media and politics have contributed to the problem, especially through stereotyping and racial bias. Well aware of the potential consequences if this country fails to act, Thompson offers concrete, realizable ideas of how our policies could, and should, change.
Synopsis
General Series Editors: Gay Wilson Allen and Sculley Bradley
Originally published between 1961 and 1984, and now available in paperback for the first time, the critically acclaimed Collected Writings of Walt Whitman captures every facet of one of Americas most important poets.
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts gathers Whitmans autobiographical notes, his views on contemporary politics, and the writings he made as he educated himself in ancient history, religion and mythology, health (including phrenology), and word-study. Included is material on his Civil War experiences, his love of Abraham Lincoln, his descriptions of various trips to the West and South and of the cities in which he resided, his generally pessimistic view of Americas prospects in the Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, and his reminiscences during his final years and his preoccupation with the increasing ailments that came with old age. Many of these notes served as sources for his poetry—first drafts of some of the poems are included as they appear in the notes—and as the basis for his lectures.
About the Author
Anthony C. Thompson is Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. He is a former Deputy Public Defender in Contra Costa County, California. He serves on the Board of Directors of the National Council for Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, California, and is Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Reentry Institute of John Jay College in New York City.