Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Economics at Brown University and the author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality.
The New Untouchables Crime: Punishment and Race in America
The current American prison system is a leviathan unmatched in human history. Never before has a supposedly free country denied basic liberty to so many of its citizens. In December 2006, some 2.25 million people were being held in the nearly 5,000 prisons and jails scattered across America's urban and rural landscapes.