The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. In 2016 there are some 2.2 million prisoners. James Braxton Peterson is Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. He has written and lectured extensively on the intersection of race, politics, and popular culture in America, with a focus on the criminal justice system, prisons, and hip-hop.

In this edifying graphic book in the "For Beginners" series, Peterson outlines the major social structures, systems, and policies of what he calls "The Prison Industrial Complex. (PIC)" After looking at two early models of prisons, the author moves on to the development of the present-day system. Here are some alarming statistics on PIC:

  • For "developed" nations comparable to the United States, the incarceration rate tends to hover around 100 prisoners per 100,000 people. By contrast, the United States had a rate of 690 prisoners per 100,000 population in 2014.
  • $80 billion is spent each year on mass incarceration.
  • It costs $11,000 to educate a young person in the United States today whereas the tab for housing an inmate is $90,000 a year.

Peterson notes that the persistence of the law-and-order ideology, the failed war on drugs, private profits on prisons, the ignominy of solitary confinement, the rising tide of recidivism, and Michelle Alexander's bellwether book The New Jim Crow (2012) have shaken up people on both sides of the incarceration debate. In closing, Peterson pleas for a change in the country's warped and often racist understandings of how we understand crime, criminals, and criminality.

The emotionally riveting illustrations in the book are from John Jennings and Stacey Robinson.