The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family

by Sylvia A. Harvey

Overview

From an award-winning journalist, a searing exposé of the effects of the mass incarceration crisis on families — including the 2.7 million American children who have a parent locked up.


In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist Sylvia A. Harvey follows the fears, challenges, and small victories of three families struggling to live within the confines of a brutal system. In Florida, a young father tries to maintain a relationship with his daughter despite a sentence of life without parole. In Kentucky, where the opioid epidemic has led to the increased incarceration of women, many of whom are white, one mother fights for custody of her children. In Mississippi, a wife steels herself for her husband's thirty-ninth year in prison and does her best to keep their sons close.


Through these stories, Harvey reveals a shadow system of laws and regulations enacted to dehumanize the incarcerated and profit off their families — from mandatory sentencing laws, to restrictions on prison visitation, to astronomical charges for brief phone calls.


The Shadow System is an eye-opening account of the way incarceration has impacted generations of American families; it delivers a galvanizing clarion call to fix this broken system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568588803
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	04/07/2020
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	540,001
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Sylvia A. Harvey reports at the intersection of race, class, and policy. Her work has appeared in The Nation, VQR, ELLE, Colorlines, the Feminist Wire, the New York Post, and more. She is the recipient of a National Headliner Award and a National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Salute to Excellence award. The Oakland native holds a BA in sociology from Columbia University and a MS in journalism from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Harvey lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Prologue: An American Family? 1

1 The Red Hammer: Mississippi 13

2 In That Place: Florida 29

3 What Addiction Looks Like: Kentucky 43

4 Boy, They Gon Fry You: Mississippi 53

5 A Normal Child: Florida 69

6 Bar Baby: Kentucky 91

7 More Human: Mississippi 109

8 A Woman's Work: Florida 123

9 Labeled a Felon: Kentucky 139

10 Time: Mississippi 149

11 The Meaning of Life: Florida 167

12 The Kids: Kentucky 187

13 The Devil in Hell: Mississippi 203

14 Soon: Florida 217

15 It's a Curse: Mississippi 229

Epilogue: Doing the Work 245

Acknowledgments 257

Notes 261

Index 271

Editorial Reviews

"A solid combination of research, compassion, and anger that sheds light on a highly flawed system."—Kirkus


"Harvey goes behind today's headlines of prison riots, inmate and officer casualties and widespread corruption. She makes it personal, weaving the paths of three families through time, crime and, seemingly inevitably, prison. Implacable poverty, addictions, blatant racism and poor legal representation coalesce to bear down on the generations of families fractured by incarceration."—BookPage

"Journalist Sylvia A. Harvey presents this urgent and compassionate call for change in the oppressive system of mass incarceration in the US."
—Ms. Magazine


"America's mass incarceration system is a monster producing limitless stories about the bodies it has devoured and the bones it has spat out. But, for the first time, Sylvia A. Harvey chronicles the collateral damage of this ravenous injustice industry by giving voice to the heartbreaking stories of the families that constitute its collateral damage."—Michael Harriot, TheRoot

"My brother was imprisoned for 30 years. I know firsthand just how devastating the impact of imprisonment is on a family. Sylvia A. Harvey's The Shadow System is an emotionally powerful and devastating analysis of how the prison system punishes and profits from families caught in its clutches. This urgent book makes us aware that some of the heaviest costs of incarceration are borne by children and families."—Michael Eric Dyson, NewYork Times bestselling author

From the Publisher

04/01/2020

Harvey, a journalist who writes about race, class, and incarceration, probes the flaws of the U.S. prison system through the lives of three people who were once incarcerated to show the traumatic effects the removal from their families has on their loved ones, especially their children. The narrative includes stories of parents William and Ruth in Mississippi, Randall and Ayana in Florida, and Dawn in Kentucky that are sad but affirming, weighing minimal legal services that trap people in biased judicial systems against inmates making the best of their circumstances. The author shows how for-profit prisons, partisan parole board appointments, and exorbitant bail fees conspire to ensure judicial systems that favor punishment over rehabilitation, leading to further separations between inmates and their children. William and Randall are serving sentences for murder, while Dawn, a victim of opioid addiction, served a short sentence before entering a treatment program. Harvey brings the perspective of her father's 27-year imprisonment and its lifelong effects on her to this empathetic investigation. VERDICT Readers concerned about prison reform and social justice will be enlightened by the perspectives offered throughout. See Emily Bazelon's Charged for another indictment of the U.S. judicial system.—Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Library Journal

2020-02-05
A black journalist with firsthand experience of the incarceration system’s impact on families, especially children, reveals its many wrongs.

With adequate statistics to back up her arguments, Harvey, who reports frequently on race and the criminal justice system (the Nation, New York Post, VQR, etc.), charges that structural racism, inequality, and biased legislation all hit poor and racial minorities the hardest. In addition to presenting her research, the author tells moving human stories of three cases—in Miami, Louisville, and Jackson, Mississippi. She rotates through these so every third chapter returns to one of them, a narrative strategy that allows the author to expand on the details of each case. Rather than focusing on the people behind bars, Harvey investigates the stories of their families on the outside, showing how the family members of the incarcerated provide a vital lifeline to the prisoners. Through her often poignant close-ups, readers get to know them and see how they have been adversely affected both economically and emotionally and how difficult it is for millions of children to spend quality time with incarcerated parents. Moving beyond the individual human stories that make this account so readable, Harvey also gives a bigger picture of the institutions—the criminal justice system, the welfare system, and the education system—and their programs and practices that affect the lives of families of the incarcerated. Furthermore, she makes comparisons between the actions of the Obama and Trump administrations and examines what individual states have and have not done. Reform of the criminal justice system is essential, she writes. In order for this to occur, we must work diligently to overcome public indifference and willful ignorance: “Who are we if we don’t stand up for those most vulnerable?”

A solid combination of research, compassion, and anger that sheds light on a highly flawed system.

Kirkus Reviews

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