1st Edition
Policing and the American Racial State from Plantation to Algorithm Racial Governance by Design
Introduction: Policing as Racial Governance 1. From Orthodoxy to the Racial State 2. The Genealogy of Racial Governance 3. Carceral Policing in Practice 4. Rupture and Resistance 5. Abolition and the Reconstruction of Safety 6. After the Racial State
Biography
Jason M. Williams is Professor of Justice Studies at Montclair State University. His research examines race, policing, reentry, and qualitative methodology. He is co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Racial Injustice and Resistance (2026) and co-editor of Abolish Criminology (Routledge).
Jason Williams offers an innovative theory of racial policing of the US as a settler colonial location where the theories of racial capitalism, internal colonialism, race-class-gender intersectionality, and articulation are applicable to show that it is not only subjective racism in isolation that is operative, it is always the racist-sexist-imperialist policing of societies structured in dominance that is challenged by all those who work through coalitions and alliances towards the abolition of oppressive structures of power in the interest of all.
Onwubiko Agozino, author of Counter-Colonial Criminology, and of Black Women and the Criminal Justice SystemDr. Jason William's book, Policing and the American Racial State from Plantation to Algorithm, offers an incisive and necessary critique of criminology. The book explores how the discipline is chronically designed to produce iterative, but not improved, treatment of African Americans in the criminal legal system. Dr. Williams argues that the way out is to adopt a Racial Governance Theory of Policing, which 'center harm instead of legal coding.' Doing so mandates a critical vision and new blueprint for criminology. A compelling and persuasive read.
Katheryn Russell-Brown, Northeastern University
