"Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives Are Surveilled And How To Work For Change" by Angela J. Hattery & Earl Smith

Policing Black Bodies:

How Black Lives Are Surveilled

And How To Work For Change

Angela J. Hattery & Earl Smith

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 

(December 8, 2017)

POLICING BLACK BODIES was released in December 2017 and presents the myriad of ways in which Black Americans are policed both literally and figuratively.  From Trayvon Martin to Freddie Gray, the stories of police violence against Black people are too often in the news. In POLICING BLACK BODIES Dr. Hattery and Dr. Smith make a compelling case that the policing of Black bodies goes far beyond these individual stories of brutality.  They connect the regulation of African American people in many settings, including the public education system and the criminal justice system, into a powerful narrative about the many ways Black bodies are policed.

Dr. Hattery is professor and director of women and gender studies at George Mason University.  She is an expert in race, gender, violence, the criminal justice system, and understanding the dynamics of family violence and its connection to mass shootings, school shootings and police shootings.  Hattery can help viewers understand the links between mass incarceration, which ensnares 1 in 3 Black men (1 million on any given day) and other parts of the criminal justice system, including the use of prison industries, protests like those in Baltimore and Ferguson, and the school to prison pipeline that ensnares more than 50,000 juveniles every year.

Dr. Smith is emeritus professor at Wake Forest University and a professor of sociology at George Mason University.  He is an expert in race, gender, violence, the criminal justice system and the dynamics of race and sport, specifically the disproportionate number of Black athletes who commit crimes against women, including sexual and intimate partner violence, and Black athlete activism (Colin Kaepernick, Venus and Serena Williams).  He can provide a framework for understanding the various forms of policing, especially policing in Black communities and offer recommendations for reform of police departments to increase safety in African American communities.