Robert T. Chase

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Robert T. Chase is an associate professor in the Department of History at Stony Brook University. He is the author of "We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners' Rights in Postwar America" (UNC 2020) and editor of "Caging Borders and Carceral States: Incarcerations, Migrant Detentions, and Resistance" (UNC 2019).

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Articles by Robert

Alabama prisoner in blood-soaked clothing

VOICES: Prison violence like Alabama's demands a national reckoning

By Robert T. Chase
June 18, 2021 - Despite lawsuits instituting reforms, state prisons across the U.S. continue to be places of physical and sexual violence, especially against incarcerated people of color. Conditions got so bad in Alabama's prisons that the federal government recently sued the state for violating the Constitution. Robert T. Chase, a historian of prisons, says they need the same kind of scrutiny now faced by police.