**⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | A Groundbreaking Examination of Incarceration**

*The Jail is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration* by Jack Norton, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, and Judah Schept is an insightful and impactful exploration of the expanding reach of mass incarceration. The authors provide a thorough analysis of how incarceration extends beyond traditional prison walls into communities and everyday life. Their research highlights the pervasive effects of the carceral state and offers innovative strategies for resistance and reform. The book’s detailed case studies and compelling arguments make it a crucial resource for understanding and challenging the broader implications of mass incarceration. *The Jail is Everywhere* is a powerful contribution to the fight for criminal justice reform.

I really wish I had a class I could assign this book for. I know a fair amount about incarceration due to what I teach, but this books broadened the scope for me about how a specific carceral system mutates and expands.

The Jail is Everywhere is a book which shines a much-needed light on the carceral logics as they pertain to the jail through the examination of anti-jail organizing in a multiple US cities and counties. The book is structured into self-contained chapters which focus on an anti-jail fight in a particular location with the chapters either being transcribed interviews or essays. This aspect helped structure the book well, and the interviews were well-moderated and interesting. I think the triumph of this book is that it clearly illustrates how humanitarian arguments are used to justify the expansion of the carceral system by cities and counties in constructing or rehabilitating jails and how these things are fallacies of reform. It also provides detailed accounts of different organizing efforts which underscore both their wins and shortcomings which I think could be learned from if organizing in your own community. Though parts of this work made me angry, not for the work itself, but because it was frustrating to see the resilience of the carceral system in fighting these efforts at abolition and decarceration, it gave me hope to see how these campaigns had made real progress and change in disparate regions of the US which helped me glimpse that a better world is possible. I think this book has a lot of meaningful takeaways which are helpful even outside of abolitionist organizing and that can contribute to a better overall attitude and worldview for leftists. For all these reasons, I think it is really a worthwhile book to read.