A piece about the controversial ruling and subsequent reversal over the consitutionality of dealth penalty in Texas this week.
It's by Robert Perkinson, a historian and author whose new book, Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire examines the history of the penal system in Texas -The most locked-down state in the country, and first in executions. Moving from slavery to the present, he shows how Texas' prison system came to serve as the national template for criminal justice, and how incarceration today perpetuates racial disparities in similar ways as convict-leasing and segregation did in post-Civil War America.
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