Beyond These Walls

Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States

By: Tony Platt

Narrated by: Jason Culp

A groundbreaking investigation into the roots of the American criminal justice system reveals how the past bleeds into the present.

Beyond These Walls is an ambitious and far-ranging exploration that tracks the legacy of crime and imprisonment in the United States, from the historical roots of the American criminal justice system to our modern state of over-incarceration, and offers a bold vision for a new future. Author Tony Platt, a recognized authority in the field of criminal justice, challenges the way we think about how and why millions of people are tracked, arrested, incarcerated, catalogued, and regulated in the United States.

Beyond These Walls traces the disturbing history of punishment and social control, revealing how the criminal justice system attempts to enforce and justify inequalities associated with class, race, gender, and sexuality. Prisons and police departments are central to this process, but other institutions - from immigration and welfare to educational and public health agencies - are equally complicit.

Platt argues that international and national politics shape perceptions of danger and determine the policies of local criminal justice agencies, while private policing and global corporations are deeply and undemocratically involved in the business of homeland security.

Finally, Beyond These Walls demonstrates why efforts to reform criminal justice agencies have often expanded rather than contracted the net of social control. Drawing upon a long tradition of popular resistance, Platt concludes with a strategic vision of what it will take to achieve justice for all in this era of authoritarian disorder.

Full production copyright: Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, “Venus Over Alderson - New Year’s Eve 1956,” in The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner (New York: International Publishers, 1963), p. 204. Reprinted by permission of International Publishers. Itaru Ina, “Haiku,” translated by Hisako Ifshini and Leza Lowitz, Modern Haiku 34, no. 2 (summer 2003), modernhaiku.org/essays/itaruinahaiku.html. Reprinted by permission of Satsuki Ina. Fragment of poem by William Wantling, “From Sestina to San Quentin” (1979). Reprinted by permission of Ruth Wantling. Fragment of poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca, “The County Jail.” Reprinted by permission of Jimmy Santiago Baca.

©2019 Tony Platt (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Having a hard time caring about Black Lives Matter?

This book will explain why Black Lives Matter is not just a bunch of whiny black people who need to get over it and quit expecting special treatment. I am white and 54 years old and have pretty much thought that. Because I personally didn’t act hateful to black people I didn’t see what the big deal about it is. “We should all just get along” summed up my views on race relations.

I chose this book because I have a friend (white) who is being unfairly incarcerated. I wanted to understand how that could happen in what I’d believed to be a just nation with checks and balances to ensure human rights.

I understand a LOT more about how that could happen after listening to this book. Wow! Were my eyes ever opened! Not only do I understand how my friend got ground up in an uncaring machine that poses as ‘the justice system’ but I also came to understand a lot about how my laid back attitude about racial equality contributes to why white police officers think it’s okay for them to murder black people, especially black men.

This book is long. It’s detailed. It is packed with statistics. It is not always a comfortable read. It is, however, an important read. I was a person who rolled my eyes and said “this is just a bunch of drama” when the sports players started kneeling during the national anthem.

By the time we reached that section in this book I was cheering them on! I also felt a little ashamed of my own self for how I thought of the players at the time, but not too much; the shame is eclipsed by this amazing feeling of growing in understanding and learning.

I recommend this book. I found it worth my time.

Wondering what “The Carceral State” is? Read (or listen to) this!

While there have been a number of solid recent works about crises of racism and dehumanization in prisons and policing in the United States, Tony Platt has written one of the few grounded in a long term perspective that helps us understand continuities in punishment in the United States over the course of the 21st century. An excellent book for anyone who wants to learn more about US prisons in the broder context of labor exploitation, imperialism, and racism.

Good read....

Informative. Does a good job showing the injustices that many have suffered under the guise of law and order. Nobody is perfect, and our criminal system itself isn't perfect. Much change is needed in the coming years if folks really need to change things.