This tightly argued and methodologically sound volume addresses widespread social assumptions associating crime and African-American men. An exploration into the criminal justice system in America today and its impact on young African-American males, this book challenges the linking of crime and race and the conservative anti-welfare, hard-on-crime agenda. Jerry Miller has spent a lifetime studying and challenging our criminal justice system. He has worked to make it more progressive and more just. He has watched as it turned into a system of segregation and control for many Americans of color. That is the story told here in devastating detail.

"The stain of minority incarceration has spread so widely that it is corrupting our nation. In this book, Jerry Miller carefully documents the intellectual genesis of this corruption and describes the profound changes needed to rescue the country from the descent into brutality."
—John McKnight, Northwestern University