Book Reviews

Way Down in the Hole

Way Down in the Hole Cover

“Way Down in the Hole” — The Agonies of Solitary Confinement (Jan 2023)

By Bill Littlefield Some readers may be surprised to learn that a high percentage of the men and women who spend time in solitary confinement have been diagnosed with severe mental illness.  Way Down in the Hole: Race, Intimacy, and the Reproduction of Racial Ideologies in Solitary Confinement by Angela J. Hattery & Earl Smith, 278 pages, Rutgers University Press. To gather material for Way Down in the Hole, the authors spent time in several state prisons where solitary confinement is one form of disciplining incarcerated men and women. Hattery, Smith, and their associates interviewed men and women who were serving ...
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Book Reviews

Policing Black Bodies

Policing Black Bodies book cover

The Long Reach of the Law: Policing Black Athletes and Trans Bodies (June 2022) – Ken Kolb

Kenneth H. Kolb First published: 07 June 2022 https://doi-org.udel.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/symb.604   Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives are Surveilled and How to Work for Change (Updated Edition) By Hattery, Angela J. and Smith, Earl ( Rowman and Littlefield, 2021) In the updated edition of Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives are Surveilled and How to Work for Change, authors Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith offer both substantive and theoretical contributions to their 2018 original. In the first edition, the authors survey the racialized dimensions of the criminal justice in America. As to be expected, the new edition includes fresh examples ...
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Book Review in Race and Justice (2019) – Caroline Bailey

Hattery, A. J., & Smith, E. (2017). Policing Black bodies: How Black lives are surveilled and how to work for change. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 284 p., $34.00, ISBN: 978-1442276956  Reviewed by: Caroline M. Bailey, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA  DOI: 10.1177/2153368719829523    Overview  Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives Are Surveilled and How to Work for Change by Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith challenges the ways in which we consider the imposition of control mechanisms on people of color in the United States, particularly African Americans. Using several theoretical perspectives—theory ...
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CHOICE review (Feb 2022)

In this updated edition of Policing Black Bodies, Hattery (Univ. of Delaware) and Smith (emer., Wake Forest Univ.) respond to the changing environment of criminal justice in the US. Four years after the book's initial publication, the authors revisit the theme in light of renewed interest in the controversy surrounding Colin Kaepernick, the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and a growing awareness of the systemic injustices transgender and disabled people face, making an already important book more current. The research and analysis are based on two theoretical threads: intersectionality and a theory of color-blind racism. The first considers ...
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