In this analysis Osel provides a devastating and radical analysis of The New Jim Crow discourse. He asks social justice advocates to take a stand against prison studies that do not include an analysis of capitalism and reflects on the significance of the "counterrevolutionary protest" in social justice work, describing how social justice advocates "sustain societal problems even while challenging them." His essay challenges anti-prison activists and others to observe and analyze "their own complicity with and legitimization of the structures that they seek to dismantle."
The New Jim Crow is a book about a modern American “caste system” without even a single reference to the modern economic paradigm.... a protest whose actual operational function is to make sure nothing really changes.
Joseph D. Osel