Alexander, Michelle, and Cornel West. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. 2011. Print.
The recommended book is significant in this context because it depicts the long road to liberty and the unjust existence of racial segregation. The book elucidates the most important feature of old machinations that refuse to die. The origins of the struggle to respect people’s rights, regardless of race, are also revealed in the source. It also highlights the ease with which people of color can be labeled and discriminated against in society, as well as in prisons. According to this book, a black criminal has scarce rights in every corner of the prison and society. This source is critical because discrimination begins from somewhere, and the contents of this source explore those incidences in detail.
Apart from addressing this as a social injustice, the author brings out dome of the factors that could have contributed to the beliefs that blacks are always committing crime. It is believe this text will exemplify the role of the society in racial incarceration. The strength of this source is that it documents older and recent incidences of discrimination in prisons. This shows that little or no changes have been made to the societal norms that label the blacks as criminals. Students will be interested in this book, as it provides relevant analogies that can be used to make arguments and reports. It will be relevant to the research to show how racial profiling has also been used to label the blacks as criminals.
Easton, Susan. Sentencing and Punishment. Oxford University Press, 2016. Print.
This book is essential to the given research, because it documents the events that took place between 1990 and 2000 that highlight the level of discrimination in prisons. The treatment that prisoners got was racial instigated according to this book, and that is important to investigate for this study. As the author points out, prisons were guilty of heard privileges owed to the prisoners in a discriminatory way. The timelines for the events in this book are critical in underlining the fact that the racial factor has been dominant for a long time.
The book underscores the ultimate purpose of sentencing in a way that shows profiling as an illegal idea. The privileges accorded to white prisoners as opposed to other races clearly indicate the discrimination based on a certain social belief. The contribution of other scholars to the contents of the book makes it credible for use to discuss sentencing and punishment as a form of changing the society that has been corrupted. The strength of the resource is its complementing the findings of other resources too. It is important because it uses latest data in compiling trends of discrimination among prisoners. For the research, it will form the relevant background that shows the main goal for sentencing and punishment of wrongdoers in the society.
Murakawa, Naomi. The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America. 2014. Print.
This book is significant to the research, because it maps out a trend that shows the aspect of discrimination in different states. The statutes on minimum punishment of crimes in prisons are applied with prejudices, and that aspect underscores the importance of this topic. The content covered in this book also highlights the fact that this matter of discrimination has been there for ages and is inherited by generations. Riots in the prisons are associated with discrimination and segregation, and that is also covered in this book.
The weakness of this source is the fact that the latest incidents of prison discrimination are not covered in the analysis. The information from this source is not sufficient alone to explain the topic in detail. However, in combination with the other sources selected for this research, it will offer a wider scope of the prisons built in America and their role in contributing to segregation. This book will add to the school of thought that the normalization of discrimination against blacks in prison could have a structural background.
Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. 2014. Print.
This source discusses the unfair sentencing of prisoners based on race and that deprives them of rights like other prisoners. From the documentation in the book, trend in relations to the prisoners headed for the death row is a show of discrimination. Besides that, those living in the prison have nothing to smile about, because the condemnation follows them all their lives. As the author of the book states, the hopes of the prisoners are in the hands of helpless people, who have to go to school and then return to challenge the system. This source is reliable because it establishes the current challenges that the justice system is facing and uses it to explain the aspect of discrimination in prison. Despite the valuable content, the source lacks an explanation of the observed segregation especially among the blacks. Nevertheless, it will be useful in generating some needed recommendations that could be implemented to deal with racial profiling and social injustices against the blacks.