Locked up and Locked down REVISED EDITION: Multitude lingers in limbo

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Locked Up and Locked Down focuses on one of the most profound anomalies of the twenty-first century, that the nation that most trumpets freedom and democracy is also the one with the highest rate of incarceration: one in 100 Americans is in prison or jail at the time of the publication of this book.
Even more scandalous is the racial disparity that accompanies these numbers, that one in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, is behind bars; and for black women, ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group. This raises the obvious question: why is there such a disparity?
Many experts attribute the increase in America’s prison population to tougher sentencing. For example, the famous “three strikes” rule has led to an increase in the time people spend in prison. Then, too, there are the cycles of violence that more overtly accompany economic deprivation and social disadvantage and lead to the asocial behavior dealt with through the criminal justice system.
Yet, it is ironic that at just the time that America celebrates a person of African American heritage in the White House, we are drawn in this Study to a continuing racism that shapes the underlying factors behind elevated rates of incarceration.
The historical conditions that compound this racism have social ramifications that perpetuate it, a story that is well told by Orlando Patterson in Rituals of Blood: The Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries. Walters-Sleyon picks up the thread and draws us to prison as a rite of passage for many young men and as surrogate welfare for a failed social policy. Drawing upon the insightful work of Christopher Marshall, he shows how all of this is at variance from a guiding biblical vision as well as from the intent in the founding of prisons as places of moral and social rehabilitation.
Writing for church and academy alike, Walters-Sleyon draws us through his own story of imprisonment to conceptions of the dignity and rights that come into play in the courtroom. For example, against a philosophy of the right laid out by G. W. F. Hegel that finds a criminal still to be a criminal even when he has been punished and freed, Walters-Sleyon points to the biblical vision and Augustinian theological tradition for a liberating and restorative understanding of the human person, a view taken up by Pope John Paul II.
While acknowledging that incarceration is appropriate for crime, Walters-Sleyon targets arbitrary arrest, racially motivated sentencing, the criminalization of black men and their commodification by a growing commercial prison industrial complex in a study that easily traverses the worlds of theory and practice. Following the guidance of The Covenant with Black America, Walters-Sleyon concludes with practical steps for churches and civic organizations that are prophetic, rational, critical, and pragmatic.