Fantastic work distilling a critique of our modern prison system and its insidious intentions to maintain a racial caste system in America. Michelle Alexander organizes and divides her work into cogent, concise chapters discussing the history leading up to the War on Drugs, and then discussing the different intersections of legislation, economics, and police enforcement that maintains a structure of oppression easily glanced over by those it does not affect.

While already agreeing with Alexander's thesis, I appreciated this work for its hard data, longitudinal sources, and clear responses to the common rebuttals this type of argument receives. I'm very excited to continue to read from the bibliography of this book to strengthen my own evidence on the topic, should I ever need it. I did find some times that Alexander repeated herself a little; while I understand the desire to really hammer home points, there were areas where an organization or concept was brought up and fully explained, discussed, and connected to her overall thesis, only to have the same organization, case, or concept brought up again a chapter later. This second time, it would once again be fully explained, discussed, and then threaded back into the slightly new perspective of the chapter. I can see why this was done (to an extent) because of the framing of each chapter around "wires in the cage" of mass incarceration, but it still was a bit redundant for me.

Lastly, I was surprised that I reached the end of the book without any specific focus on the labor that prisoners take part in unjustly. Michelle Alexander primarily focused on how the system funnels men of color into prison and then makes them pariahs upon exiting, but I was surprised there was little to no time dedicated to the ways in which private interests use prisoners as modern day slaves for very cheap labor. Regardless, a fantastic work overall that I will be returning to.