Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America. Jonathan Simon.

Simon, Jonathan. Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America. The New Press, 2014.

The book focuses on a handful of court cases that have significantly affected law regarding prisons and prisoners in California. While Simon is ultimately arguing that mass incarceration is wrong and should be discontinued everywhere in the United States, he says that he focused specifically on California for this book because California's prison system is the worst and most over-crowded. What we learn here, though, applies throughout the country.

Pros: This book contains a lot of information about court cases with direct bearing on the problems inherent in a mass incarceration system--especially one that consistently operates at 200-300% over capacity. It also does a good job of centering the importance of social narratives: The way we think about prisoners affects how we're willing to (mis)treat them, and sometimes changing the narrative is even more important than changing individual laws.

Cons (no pun intended): The book was repetitive. It was clear and easy to read, but each chapter repeated too much information from previous chapters, which became irritating over time.

There were glancing references to issues of race and class, but it seemed to me that these subjects--so important when discussing the justice and penal systems--were glossed over more than I would have expected.