Contributors to the book offer critiques of the death penalty, racism, and the criminal justice system; confinement based on gender and sexuality; police misconduct and brutality; and State punitive responses to political radicalism and resistance. The book's 26 chapters explore the limits of a democratic society that has dedicated immense resources to policing and punishment. Chapters are organized in five parts: (1) executions--capital punishment and sentencing children to death; (2) blacks and criminal justice--black radicalism and the economy of incarceration, young blacks and the criminal justice system, and black gangs; (3) gender, sexuality, and confinement--programming and health care accessibility for incarcerated women, race and gender in studies of incarceration, imprisoned native women and the importance of native traditions, military prostitution in Asia and the United States, AIDS and rape in Texas prisons, and ritual killings; (4) policing--lynching and policing, militarization of the police, state violence, the criminalization of immigrant workers, and surveillance; and (5) political repression and resistance--the grand jury and jail activists, Arab Americans and civil liberties, political incarceration, and political prisoners. References and notes