Tinkering Around the Edges: Eine Kritik der liberalen Gefängnisreformen in den USA und ihrer sozialtheoretischen Legitimationserzählung

Lukas Egger

doi:10.32387/prokla.v51i203.1936

Authors

Lukas Egger Uni Wien https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4330-689X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32387/prokla.v51i203.1936

Keywords:

Mass incarceration, USA, Trump, Biden, racism, war on drugs

Abstract

US-Mass Incarceration has been discovered as a problem even from parts of the two major political parties in recent years, especially the Democrats. Since Obamas presidency there have been reform efforts on the federal as well as the state level, which aimed primarily at the reduction of sentencing lengths for low-level drug offenders. As a theoretical basis of this reform-focus a story about mass incarceration is often referred to, which was most prominently advanced by Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow. In this article a critique of this story will be presented, which shows, that the concentration on the »War on Drugs« restricts serious reforms of the criminal justice system.

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