Policing and the American Racial State from Plantation to Algorithm
Racial Governance by Design
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:2nd Nov '26
£155.00
This title is due to be published on 2nd November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£41.99(9781138191785)
Why does American policing persist in producing racial inequality despite decades of reform? This book argues that the answer lies not in individual bias or institutional failure but in intentional design. Introducing the Racial Governance Theory of Policing (RGTP), Jason M. Williams offers a sweeping reinterpretation of American policing as the central mechanism through which the racial state governs racialized populations, from slave patrols and convict leasing through stop and frisk and predictive policing algorithms.
Drawing on critical race theory, Black radical thought, decolonial scholarship, and abolition studies, the book traces a four-century genealogy of racial governance, demonstrating through case studies of Ferguson and Baltimore how contemporary policing reproduces the same logic of extraction, surveillance, and control that structured the plantation. The book argues that reform has consistently served to extend and legitimize this system rather than constrain it, and closes with an abolitionist reconstruction of public safety grounded in the insurgent knowledge traditions of communities most targeted by racial governance.
Written for scholars, students, and practitioners across criminology, sociology, political science, Black studies, and law, this book offers the theoretical language needed to understand and ultimately dismantle policing as a technology of racial domination.
Jason Williams offers an innovative theory of racial policing of the US as a settler colonial location where the theories of racial capitalism, internal colonialism, race-class-gender intersectionality, and articulation are applicable to show that it is not only subjective racism in isolation that is operative, it is always the racist-sexist-imperialist policing of societies structured in dominance that is challenged by all those who work through coalitions and alliances towards the abolition of oppressive structures of power in the interest of all.
Onwubiko Agozino, author of Counter-Colonial Criminology, and of Black Women and the Criminal Justice System
Dr. Jason William's book, Policing and the American Racial State from Plantation to Algorithm, offers an incisive and necessary critique of criminology. The book explores how the discipline is chronically designed to produce iterative, but not improved, treatment of African Americans in the criminal legal system. Dr. Williams argues that the way out is to adopt a Racial Governance Theory of Policing, which 'center harm instead of legal coding.' Doing so mandates a critical vision and new blueprint for criminology. A compelling and persuasive read.
Katheryn Russell-Brown, Northeastern University
Jason Williams has written an indispensable book demonstrating that policing operates as a foundational, not incidental, institution of the U.S. racial order. Policing and the American Racial State shows that modern law enforcement has never been a neutral guarantor of safety but has long functioned as a central mechanism of racial control. Williams traces a clear lineage from slavery-era patrols to today's algorithmic policing surveillance, revealing how each generation of policing technology reproduces white-dominant power over Black Americans. A rigorous, necessary book for anyone rethinking US law enforcement.
Joe Feagin, Distinguished University Professor (Emeritus), Texas A&M University
Professor Jason M. Williams’s monograph is a brilliant, ground-breaking analysis of his concept of “the racial governance theory of policing” that makes a major contribution to scholarly discourses on white supremacy in the United States, as well as providing a provocative critique of the discipline of criminology. His articulation of “Black rebellion” and careful engagement with a broad range of legendary scholars, including feminist/womanist icons, underscores for me the power of intersectional theorizing and its impact across many disciplines and topics. Policing and the American Racial State from Plantation to Algorithm: Racial Governance By Design is a must read for scholars, activists, organizers, elected officials, students and others grappling with many of the most difficult dilemmas facing this nation in these times.
Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Founding Director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center, and Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Comparative Women’s Studies, Spelman College
ISBN: 9781138191778
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 453g
224 pages