Brittany Friedman with Reuben Jonathan MIller

Join us as we welcome sociologist, filmmaker, and USC assistant professor, Brittany Friedman to Chicago to discuss her new book, . She will be joined in coversation with Dr. Reuben Jonathan Miller, sociologist and the author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration.

ABOUT THE BOOK:What hidden forces uphold racial oppression in our Pr*son system? What lies and control techniques do Pr*son officials enlist to incite violence, suppress Black political movements, and eliminate Black individuals? I invite you to bring to light the deception, empire, corruption, and white supremacy in American mass incarceration with a feature of the bold new book, Carceral Apartheid, a term Friedman coined to refer to the intricate power dynamics that fuel racial control in our Pr*son system.
Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, author of Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court, calls the book, “A pathbreaking work full of explosive findings on the coordination of white supremacy, corrections, policing, and the lies to cover it up.”
Friedman's insightful research of previously untapped archives spanning decades and compelling interviews with members of various organizations in Pr*son unravel how white supremacists acting as agents of the state K*ll nonwhite people with impunity and its effect on Black communities and society as a whole.
Her interviews with Pr*son members who have previously identified with gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerilla Family, Mexican Mafia, and Nuestra Familia provide a nuanced and critical perspective to conversations around the war against Black incarcerated individuals that was declared in the 1950s and persists today. By covering this book, you can encourage your readers to recognize the patterns of deceit, disinformation, and division in the systems in their community and beyond and ignite meaningful conversations.

ABOUT BRITTANY FRIEDMAN: Dr. Brittany Friedman is recognized as an innovative thinker on how people and institutions hide harmful truths. Her current work examines this in the realm of social control, and the underside of government such as prisons, courts, and treasuries. Friedman is considered a pathbreaking scholar producing big ideas that blow the whistle on bad behavior within society, and author of a January 2025 book titled Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons.

ABOUT DR. MILLER: Dr. Reuben Miller is a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow, University of Chicago sociologist and the author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration. As a chaplain at the Cook County J*il in Chicago and as a sociologist studying mass incarceration, he has spent years alongside prisoners, formerly incarcerated people, their families, and their friends to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail.

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