Racism

Sociology

Archaeology

Prison

Criminology

Punitive damages

History

Criminal justice

Political science

Mass incarceration

Crime control

Imprisonment

Context (archaeology)

Social control

Criminalization

Annual Review of Criminology

This review synthesizes the historical literature on the criminalization and incarceration of black Americans for an interdisciplinary audience. Drawing on key insights from new histories in the field of American carceral studies, we trace the multifaceted ways in which policymakers and officials at all levels of government have used criminal law, policing, and imprisonment as proxies for exerting social control in predominantly black communities from the colonial era to the present. By underscoring this antiblack punitive tradition in America as central to the development of crime-control strategies and mass incarceration, our review lends vital historical context to ongoing discussions, research, and experimentation within criminology and other fields concerned about the long-standing implications of institutional racism, violence, and inequity entrenched in the administration of criminal justice in the United States from the top down and the ground up.

The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A Historical Overview