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Intended to provoke controversial and uncomfortable discussion, Hattery and Smith's book focuses on what they expose as America's deeply rooted culture, history and ideology of deliberately violating black bodies in the name of policing. In ten chapters, they concentrate not simply on exonerated police killings of unarmed black men but also on mass incarceration in what they report as a new plantation economy with a pipeline running from schoolrooms to prison cells in a prison-industrial complex. Their concerns reach the indignities and insults blacks suffer daily not only at the hands of law enforcement and the criminal justice system but in every aspect of life amid the fiction of colorblind racism. Well documented, passionately argued, and engagingly written, this powerful analysis of systematic racism describes how society supports white, male, patriarchal, heterosexual privilege while oppressing marginalized peoples. Verdict: An essential work that advances an acute awareness of our responsibility to make society equitable for all.

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It looks at the school-to-prison pipeline, mass incarceration, and how Black women and trans people are treated. Our global conversations around solutions have been shifting from individual to systemic, and this points out the systemic problem of policing Black bodies.

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In this updated edition of Policing Black Bodies, Hattery and Smith respond to the changing environment of criminal justice in the US. Four years after the book's initial publication, the authors revisit the theme in light of renewed interest in the controversy surrounding Colin Kaepernick, the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and a growing awareness of the systemic injustices transgender and disabled people face, making an already important book more current. The research and analysis are based on two theoretical threads: intersectionality and a theory of color-blind racism…Through these lenses, the authors examine such topics as the school-to-prison pipeline, mass incarceration, and the policing of disenfranchised and marginalized people's bodies. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.