Scott reviewed City of Inmates by Kelly Lytle Hernandez
Review of 'City of Inmates' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
An excellent, accessible comparative study examining the history of incarceration in Los Angeles, tracing its practice through a chronological series of stories beginning with colonization in the late 18th century to the Watts Rebellion in 1965. In doing so, Lytle Hernández demonstrates the leading role that Los Angeles played in the emergence of the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States, but more centrally to argue that incarceration is a key component of settler colonialism in what became Los Angeles. Incarceration is one tool in the service of the “eliminatory logic” of settler colonialism, leading Lytle Hernández to define incarceration as “elimination.” Throughout the book, it can be seen how the law, its targeted enforcement, and resultant incarceration were used by Anglo-American settlers to preserve their racist fantasy of an “Aryan City of the Sun.”