Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City

by Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka Kurtiis Haymarket Books 3/11/2025, paperback SKU: 9798888902646   A damning account of the latest transformation in mass incarceration, revealing how powerful nonprofits and so-called progressives used the language of social movements to build new jails. In 2019, after unyielding pressure from activists, New York City seemed poised to close the detested Rikers Island penal colony. The local press dutifully reported that the end of Rikers was imminent, and New Yorkers celebrated the closure of the country's largest urban jail, condemned as a moral stain on an otherwise great city. The problem, however, was that the city had not actually committed to closing Rikers. And at the same time, it laid the groundwork for the construction of more jails, a network of skyscraper facilities amounting to the largest carceral construction the city has seen in decades. How did this happen? In Skyscraper Jails, scholars and organizers Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka Kurti