America's Jail

They say it's like going to hell. The second you step foot on the island in the middle of New York's East river, "you can feel the fire.? A fixture of pop culture and underground prison lore alike, the sprawling jail complex has produced near-weekly stories of routine brutality, deprivation, violence; it has become synonymous with both the horrors of mass incarceration and the structurally-racist class domination at its core. And its future now hangs in the balance.

Captives of a New Alcatraz is the first definitive history of the jail which arrives as New York city debates its possible closure. A thrilling narrative account of the jail's descent into infamy, Captives also delivers an urgent intervention into the nationwide conversation about the future of mass incarceration. For Jarrod Shanahan, the story is personal, as his interest in the island's history dates to his own incarceration there, which led him to research the building where he was held.
Drawing from extensive archival research, decades of journalism, interviews, prisoner testimonials, and firsthand experience, Jarrod Shanahan tells the story of how so many miserable jail facilities ended up on one tiny East River islet, by charting the unwitting cooperation between prison reformers, who built jail infrastructure on the optimistic wager it could be used for social good, and the forces of organized retrenchment (cops and prison guards organizations), who ensured this would never come to pass. By tracing the failure of jail reform in postwar New York in detail, Captives of a New Alcatraz casts considerable doubt on jail reformers' ability to solve the problems of incarceration with better incarceration, even in shiny new jails. As his spectacular history makes clear, any serious challenge to mass incarceration must focus on offsetting and diminishing the social power held by police, jail guards, and other key actors in the security state. Anything less will lead us straight back to Rikers.