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This class will examine the U.S. government’s use of incarceration, parole, and house-arrest as default forms of social management, in lieu of social welfare policy. We will explore the origins of the “carceral state” and its impact on targeted communities. The class will focus on often neglected aspects of the ongoing crisis of mass-incarceration in the U.S., in particular its debilitating effects on single-mother households, children who grow up with incarcerated family members, and the extreme violence and deprivation of basic medical needs faced by incarcerated women and LGBTQI individuals. Topics will include black-feminism and “black matriarchy,” the relationship between domestic violence and mass-incarceration in communities of color, women and non-gender conforming prisoners, the “school-to-prison pipeline,” the psychological effects of policing on targeted communities, and the fiscal interests served by mass-incarceration. We will engage sociological, historical, and philosophical materials, as well as literature, film, and past and present social movements.