Classroom Resources
James Baldwin’s essay Fifth Avenue, Uptown: In this essay Baldwin describes his Harlem neighborhood in 1960. The essay clearly depicts a typical neighborhood in which the history of the war on drugs, ramped-up policing policies, and mass incarceration evolved over the last forty years.
Political cartoons: There are political cartoons online for any issue this unit touches, from juvenile justice to prison history. Pat Bagley is one cartoonist with an excellent suggestion. Others include Mike Baldwin and Mike Keefe. Comics from comics.com and usprisonculture.com have many relevant cartoons, as well. The latter has cartoons and images that include historical perspectives and images.
Jim St. Germain’s memoir A Stone of Hope: we probably will not have time to use this full-length memoir in my class, though I’d like to. It is St. Germain’s story of leaving Haiti as a child and ending up in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. He details his story from recent immigrant to gang member. At risk from the beginning, he appears to be a lost cause until he ends up in a rehabilitative low-risk security facility where he is out of the punitive cycle and supported to find his way as a productive adult. He moves back to the projects he grew up in to help break the cycle for others like himself. It is an accessible read with high interest and still has literary value making it a reasonable choice for a language arts classroom.
Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling by Sabrina Jones and Marc Mauer: This graphic retelling of Marc Mauer’s well-known book gives an easy-to-understand and brief explanation of juvenile justice practices over the last forty years without learning this history that begins with the war on drugs in the 1970s. I will begin the unit with this; however, many individual pages are good stand-alone illustrative resources.
Annie E. Casey video on transforming probation: This video documents proposes changes in juvenile probation that reflect best practices from the Missouri Approach to juvenile justice. The three-minute video explains how to transform juvenile probation and can be found with those search words.
Jay-Z video, The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail: With the help of artist Molly Crabapple, Jay-Z narrates the history of the war on drugs and the racial disparities within it. It covers policy, policing, sentencing, and current drug laws, including the role of race in each.
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