The growth of mass incarceration in the past few decades is the source of much scholarly attention. In Melanie D. Newport’s new book, she interrogates local politics and catalogs the historical growth of Chicago’s jails. As she notes, “jails are fundamentally political institutions (14),” and throughout the book, she meticulously traces jail development in Chicago to illustrate, in part, how race and racism are integral components of carceral state building. This impressive book marshals detailed historical evidence to point scholars of carceral politics to the often-unexplored dynamics of local politics in the contemporary expansion of mass incarceration.

Chapter 1 begins with the origins of jailing in Chicago in the nineteenth century. As in other realms of public policy, jails were not immune to Progressive Era fights over the exact governance and character of these institutions. Conversations over potential penal abolition soon faded and, in their place, discussions on how best to reform the system as a weapon of “racial, ethnic, and political control” (27) dominated the politics of jailing. This desire for social control, combined with rampant Democratic corruption, meant that the jail at the turn of the century controlled and incarcerated poor people—in particular, poor people of color.

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