Jarrod Shanahan
Jarrod Shanahan is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Governors State University.
Solidarity Behind Bars: NYC’s Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association
By Jarrod ShanahanMayor de Blasio’s proposal to shutter the jail complex at Rikers Island and replace it with smaller, borough-based jails is worthy of tortured scrutiny, offering as it does the moral and political quandary of replacing a notoriously brutal penal colony and avatar of mass incarceration…with still more sites of mass incarceration.
Elizabeth Hinton’s America on Fire
By Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka KurtiElizabeth Hinton’s America on Fire, packaged as “the untold story of police violence and Black rebellion since the 1960s,” is a timely meditation on historical continuities and differences between previous cycles of urban rebellion and the present.
Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis
By Jarrod Shanahan and Abby CunniffA crumbling strip of asphalt winds through the craggy countryside of eastern Kentucky, striated with power lines sagging in every direction. Wobbly pavement markings and errant skidmarks vanish at a hairpin bend buffered by low guard rails framing a rolling, sparsely tree-spotted expanse of hills. On one side of this road stands a roughly chiseled open coal seam, marking the remnants of a former mine. On the other, a bowed chain link fence capped in razor-wire announces the outer periphery of Otter Creek Correctional Facility. This remarkable image by photographer Jill Frank adorns the jacket of prison scholar Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis (New York: NYU Press, 2022), confronting the reader with the book’s central preoccupations.
In Conversation
Under the Mask of Philanthropy: Michael Barker with Jarrod Shanahan
By Jarrod ShanahanRail Contributor Jarrod Shanahan speaks with support worker and socialist Michael Barker about the economic, social, and historic pitfalls of liberal philanthropy.
Prelude to a Hot American Summer
By Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka KurtiIn the unfolding of social antagonism which drives human history there are spectacular moments when a hitherto-invisible threshold is crossed and great masses who have long appeared to suffer in silence thrust themselves onto center stage to claim their place as breakers of chains and makers of history. The 2010 self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi was one such event. The 2016 plan to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline across sacred indigenous land and water was another.
All Jails Fit to Build
By Jarrod Shanahan and Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot“Borough-based” jails are nothing new in New York City. The original incarnation of Lower Manhattan’s notorious Tombs facility, opened in 1838, replaced the British colonial jail built before the Revolution.
The Dangerous Seduction of Reform
By Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka KurtiWhile the original incarnation of Black Lives Matter focused on blocking infrastructure, like highways and bridges—ostensibly to wake up a slumbering public to the brutal reality of American policing, and press for reforms that would make Black lives matter in the eyes of the law—this time around protestors have unleashed an often frontal attack on symbols of carceral power: police precincts, courthouses, department of correction buildings, to name a few. As these rotting avatars of social control draw increasing fire, sometimes it seems that anything is possible but a return to the status quo that they serve to prop up.
Class Power on Zero-Hours
By Jarrod ShanahanAngryWorkers want you to build an international revolutionary organization guided by the axiom “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves,” and they have a plan.
