from Making Worlds Books
In Skyscraper Jails, scholars and organizers Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka Kurti detail how progressive forces in New York City appropriated the rhetoric of social movements and social justice to promise “downsized” and “humane” jails. The principal advocates of these new jails were not right-wing politicians, but prominent city activists and progressive non-profit organizations. Join the authors for a discussion of this unique moment for anti-jail activism and what it means for moving forward.
Zhandarka Kurti is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Loyola University, Chicago. She researches and writes about race, class, policing, incarceration, and mass supervision. She is the co-author of States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform and the Future of America’s Punishment System and editor of Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity. She lives in Chicago.
Jarrod Shanahan is the author of Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage, co-author of States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform, and America’s Punishment System, and City Time: On Being Sentence to Rikers Island, forthcoming from NYU Press, and editor of Treason to Whiteness Is Loyalty to Humanity. He lives in Chicago and works as an assistant professor of Criminal Justice at Governors State University in University Park, IL.
