Becky Pettit, Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress
| Author | Eduardo Bautista |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1462474513514027 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
interviews. Given Feld’s prolific prior work on race in the juvenile justice system,
Kids, Cops and Confessions is a detour from a more structuralist account of juvenile
justice system processes. The depth of analysis, however, allows Feld to draw out
how one important structure – that of geography – shapes the interrogation room.
Feld devotes an entire chapter to the differences between suburban and urban
counties, noting that urban youth are much more likely to invoke Miranda than
suburban youth, and that ‘accounting for geography washes out the race effect
when predicting [...] that a juvenile will invoke Miranda’ (p. 225). Urban police are
much more likely to interrogate overall, much more likely to do so in custodial
settings and using a kid’s previous records in interrogations, and much less likely to
involve parents than their suburban counterparts. Suburban police officers, by
contrast, tend to have more evidence when confronting a youth, and are much
less likely to use minimization tactics. Geography plays a key role not just in how
police conduct interrogations, but also in the histories of the youths involved in the
system, as those from urban communities are much more likely to have a history of
law enforcement contacts or prior criminal records, and are less likely to cooperate
with the police. The contribution of geography to the extensive over-representation
of youth of color in the juvenile justice system is one that is often overlooked, and
Feld does an exquisite job of noting just how the geographic circumstances of an
arrest influence the type of interrogation one will receive.
Feld concludes with suggestions for policy reforms that would reinvigorate the
due process protections of the system, and go to greater lengths to protect especially
younger suspects from the danger of false confessions and overbearing interroga-
tions. Feld’s analysis demonstrates decisively why these reforms are needed in order
to reinvigorate due process and provide juveniles with the type of state protections
that In Re Gault envisioned. Feld’s suggestions however should not be limited to
juveniles and are simple protections that would go a long way to legitimating inter-
rogation tacticsin adult cases as well. While the reader whowants a salacious view of
interrogationswill be disappointed, the book is a measured account of interrogations
that will appeal to anyone with an interest in the inner workings of the juvenile
justice system, the interrogation process, or even how the conflict between crime
control and due process is resolved everyday by system players.
Elizabeth Brown
San Francisco State University, USA
Becky Pettit, Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress, Russell Sage
Foundation: New York, 2012; 156 pp.: 9780871546678, $29.95 (pbk)
The election of President Barack Obama has been touted as the ultimate measure
of racial progress in a nation that has long suffered from the scars of slavery and
segregation. In Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress,
Becky Pettit complicates this picture by suggesting that racial inequality in the
Book reviews 613
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