The following review appeared in the August 2014 issue of CHOICE.
51-7056 HV8886 2013-15340 CIP
Wakefield, Sara. Children of the prison boom: mass incarceration and the future of American inequality, by Sara Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman. Oxford, 2014. 231p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199989225, $34.95
Wakefield (criminal justice, Rutgers) and Wildeman (sociology, Yale) tested the hypothesis that the incarceration of parents worsens inequality, especially for the children of incarcerated black fathers. This is an original contribution to criminology in which the effects of inequality on chances of ending up in prison have been established, but without enough research on how the incarceration of parents deepens childhood inequality. Using the biographies of Michael and Nathaniel, whose fathers were in prison and who were raised by single mothers in similar communities full of drugs and violence, the authors explain the different outcomes for Nathaniel, who grew up to follow his father to prison, and Michael, who went on to obtain a master's degree before being elected as the youngest member on his city council. The book presents empirical analysis of existing databases and concludes that the costs of mass incarceration outweigh the supposed benefits of reducing crime and protecting children from disruptive parents. Given the analysis, the authors should have taken a position on the campaign against the war on drugs as a major cause of both mass incarceration and mass violence in the communities to which incarcerated parents return with frequent recidivism. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduate to faculty and professional libraries. -- B. Agozino, Virginia Tech
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