RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksBeyond elucidating how Rikers has influenced municipal politics, Captives asks how jailing contributed to the newest iteration of a racialized social order in New York, which then spread to the rest of the country...From his perspective on Rikers looking back at the Manhattan skyline, Shanahan realized that jails are not only a critical component of the city\'s social order, but that they are the necessary opposite of New York\'s famous destinations...To incorporate this source material effectively, Shanahan engages with incarcerated people on a number of levels, including the conditions of their arrest, their political networks, and their personal lives..Shanahan shows how the violence that holds New York City jails together was built up through guards’ enforcement and administrative reforms over the preceding decades...Captives shows that the DOC will never solve the problems on Rikers...Their outsize role in the public budget only exacerbates the city’s racist and exploitative economic system...To fix Rikers, you have to fix New York.
