The Roots of Imprisonment: New Book Unearths Global History of American Prison System
'In prisons, archives and libraries in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Panama and even at Harvard University, Benjamin Weber spent 10 years learning how today’s prison system in the United States began centuries ago outside of its borders.
“Technologies of oppression were pioneered in other places before they came back to the United States prison system,” said Weber, an assistant professor of African American and African studies in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis.
Weber’s new book American Purgatory: Prison Imperialism and the Rise of Mass Incarceration (The New Press) tells the story of American incarceration, from its roots in racial slavery and colonialism to the present day, through the stories of the people who built resistance and freedom movements from within its confines.'