Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age

281 Pages·2020·8.259 MB·English

by  Brian Jefferson

DIGITIZE AND PUNISH
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DIGITIZE AND PUNISH
RACIAL CRIMINALIZATION
IN THE DIGITAL AGE
BRIAN JEFFERSON
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
Minneapolis
London
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Every effort was made to obtain permission to reproduce material in this book. If
any proper acknowledgment has not been included here, we encourage copyright
holders to notify the publisher.
Copyright 2020 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
ISBN 978-1-5179-0922-2 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-5179-0923-9 (pb)
A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress.
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
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For my mother and Brandie
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The obscurantist language that veils or normalizes oppressive
policies is called into question.
— Joy James, Erasing the Spectacle of Racialized State Violence
You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the
economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with
great violence, upon the body.
— Ta- Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
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CONTENTS
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Introduction: NextGen Nightmare . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Computation and Criminalization . . . . . . . . . . 19
2. Dreams of Digital Carceral Power . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3. A Fully Automated Police Apparatus . . . . . . . . . 93
4. Punishment in the Network Form . . . . . . . . . . 129
5. How to Program a Carceral City . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Conclusion: Viral Abolition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
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