Source: Lecture 8, Ethnic Studies 21AC, UC Berkeley
Tags: policing the crisis, carceral technology, prison expansion, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, surplus, neoliberalism, prison-industrial complex, moral panic, racialized criminality, natal alienation, prison town, four theories of imprisonment, prison binge, accumulation by dispossession, neo-slave, presence of absence
The second half of Lecture 8 examines how prisons function as a geographic solution to political and economic crises created by the state. It walks through four standard theories of imprisonment, shows why each fails to explain mass incarceration, introduces Ruth Wilson Gilmore's framework of surplus crisis and globalisation, and connects prison expansion to neoliberal logic and racialized criminality.
Carceral technology
The use of space itself as a tool of punishment and control. Prisons are placed in remote locations, making them invisible to most of the public and isolating inmates from families and communities.
Natal alienation
Forced separation from family and community as a feature of imprisonment. Reinforced by remote prison locations, reduced visiting hours, and expensive communication (e.g. $1/minute phone calls).
Racialized criminality
The process by which crime and criminality are associated with specific racial groups, justifying surveillance, policing, and incarceration that disproportionately targets communities of colour.
Moral panic
A wave of public fear, often disproportionate to the actual threat, that is used to justify expanded state control. In the context of prisons: mass prison building began while crime rates were actually falling.
Prison binge
A term describing the US addiction to incarceration, the compulsive expansion of the prison system beyond any rational relationship to crime rates.
Surplus (Gilmore)
Ruth Wilson Gilmore's concept that surpluses of land, finance, and labour accumulate into crisis under globalisation, and that prisons absorb these surpluses. Prison is a geographic fix for a political and economic problem.
Accumulation by dispossession
A neoliberal mechanism by which wealth is transferred upward: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, through deregulation and the withdrawal of public resources.
Presence of absence
The state's deliberate decision not to intervene, which itself produces outcomes. Inaction is a form of action. The state shapes conditions by choosing where to withdraw.
Toxic inequality
Inequality that is racialized and materially produced, creating specific conditions of harm (e.g. the Flint water crisis).
Neo-slave
A concept from the course readings linking contemporary incarceration to the condition of slavery, suggesting continuity between chattel slavery and the modern carceral state.
The central argument is that global economic crises have very local effects, and prisons are one of those local effects.
The film "Prison Town" illustrates this:
Prisons are presented as economic solutions for struggling communities (jobs, planned economy).
There is a mismatch between the severity of punishment and the crimes committed.
Prison guards themselves suffer, with increased levels of PTSD and stress.
California spends more on prisons than on education.
Geography hides prisons from public view, creating an "absence" that keeps incarceration invisible.
Scale of the system: 33 state prisons (at 150% capacity), 13 federal prisons.
Prisons are deliberately sited in remote, low-income areas, which:
Isolates inmates from families (natal alienation).
Creates dependency on expensive communication ($1/minute phone calls at California Correctional Women's Facility), allowing the market to exploit inmates and families.
Health problems are widespread within prisons.
The most recent California prison, Kern Valley (Delano II), was built in 2005. Four more have been proposed since, but none built.
California courts ruled that overcrowding constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, forcing reductions (San Quentin from 165% to 135% capacity).
Organising efforts successfully stopped new prisons from being built, while the state continued to incarcerate, forcing the system into crisis.
There is a direct link: communities of colour in cities are abandoned (disinvestment, resource withdrawal), while prisons are built in rural areas to absorb the people displaced by that abandonment.
This is what "racialized criminality" looks like structurally.
1. Deterrence
The claim that prisons prevent crime by making punishment frightening enough to deter it. The problem: correlation between rising incarceration and declining crime does not establish causation. Crime was already declining when prison building accelerated.
2. Incapacitation
The idea that locking people up prevents them from committing further crimes. This treats symptoms rather than causes.
3. Rehabilitation
The idea that prison reforms individuals. In practice, US prisons invest little in rehabilitative programming.
4. Retribution
Punishment as moral payback. This does not explain the scale of mass incarceration or why it expanded when crime was falling.
Each theory has significant weaknesses. The lecture argues that better explanations are needed.
1. Moral panic
Public fear is used to justify control. But the moral panic itself was not actually increasing; mass prison building began as crime was decreasing. The panic was manufactured or amplified rather than organic.
2. Public safety
Politicians claim credit for "keeping communities safe." Drug use is invoked to label people as "addicts" and threats. But drug use was actually declining from the 1970s onward; what increased was the targeting of minority groups.
3. Longer sentences
Punitive sentencing is cited as a driver of prison expansion. But this raises the question: where did the punitive impulse come from? If crime is falling and incarceration is rising, what role are prisons actually serving?
4. Structural changes
Property offences linked to economic desperation ("illegal entitlements," people taking things from others). This points toward economic causes but still does not fully explain the scale of the prison boom.
"Prison is a geographic solution to the political and economic crises that the state creates."
Under globalisation, surpluses of land, finance, and labour accumulate and become crises.
Prisons absorb all three: they use surplus land (remote rural sites), surplus capital (construction and operation), and surplus labour (both as inmates and as guards).
Neoliberalism favours free markets and less government regulation.
Accumulation by dispossession transfers wealth upward, widening inequality.
The "presence of absence" describes how the state's choice not to intervene is itself a form of intervention that shapes outcomes.
Neoliberal rationale holds that collective identity hinders individual selfhood, which is used to delegitimise solidarity and community organising.
Inequality that is racialized and produces material harm.
The Flint water crisis is given as a concrete example: a community of colour exposed to poisoned water as a result of cost-cutting decisions made by the state.
Drawn from course readings on the "state of slave."
Suggests a line of continuity between chattel slavery and modern incarceration: control of Black bodies, extraction of labour, natal alienation, and legal dehumanisation.
⚠️ Know all four standard theories of imprisonment and be ready to explain why each one fails to account for mass incarceration on its own.
⚠️ Ruth Wilson Gilmore's surplus framework is central. Be able to explain how land, financial, and labour surpluses connect to prison expansion under globalisation.
⚠️ The distinction between moral panic and actual crime rates is a likely exam point. Crime was declining as prison building accelerated.
⚠️ "Presence of absence" is a key concept for understanding how neoliberalism operates: the state shapes outcomes by choosing not to act.
⚠️ Understand the link between urban abandonment of communities of colour and rural prison creation. This is the geographic logic of racialized criminality.
⚠️ The concept of natal alienation connects the prison system to the neo-slave reading. Be prepared to draw that connection.
Q: What does Ruth Wilson Gilmore mean when she calls prison "a geographic solution to the political and economic crises that the state creates"?
A: Gilmore argues that globalisation produces surpluses of land, finance, and labour that accumulate into crisis. Prisons absorb all three: they are built on surplus rural land, funded by surplus capital, and filled with surplus labour (people made economically redundant). The state creates the conditions of crisis through policy choices, then uses prisons to manage the fallout geographically.
Q: Why does the moral panic explanation for prison expansion fail?
A: Mass prison building began during a period when crime was actually declining. The public fear used to justify expanded incarceration was not proportionate to the actual threat. The panic was manufactured or amplified, often by politicians seeking to appear tough on crime, rather than reflecting a genuine increase in danger.
Q: How does the concept of "presence of absence" apply to neoliberalism and the carceral state?
A: The state's decision not to intervene (e.g. refusing to regulate markets, withdrawing public services from poor communities) is itself a form of action that produces specific outcomes: deepening inequality, abandoning communities of colour, and creating the conditions that lead to criminalisation and incarceration. Inaction is a policy choice.
Q: What is the connection between urban abandonment and rural prison creation?
A: Communities of colour in cities are subjected to organised disinvestment and resource withdrawal. The people displaced or criminalised by that abandonment are then incarcerated in prisons built in remote rural areas. The same structural forces produce both the urban decay and the rural prison economy.
Q: How does carceral technology use space as a tool of control?
A: Prisons are placed in remote locations, making them invisible to most of the public and isolating inmates from their families and communities. This geographic isolation (natal alienation) is compounded by expensive communication systems and reduced visiting hours, so space itself becomes a mechanism of punishment beyond the sentence.
Q: What is "toxic inequality" and how does it differ from general inequality?
A: Toxic inequality refers to inequality that is specifically racialized and materially produced, creating conditions of direct harm. The Flint water crisis is the key example: a community of colour was exposed to contaminated water because of cost-cutting decisions by the state. The inequality is not just economic but physical and environmental.
policing the crisis, political geographies of globalisation, carceral technology, carceral state, prison expansion, mass incarceration, prison-industrial complex, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, surplus land, surplus labour, surplus finance, prison binge, moral panic, racialized criminality, natal alienation, prison town, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, neoliberalism, accumulation by dispossession, presence of absence, toxic inequality, Flint water crisis, neo-slave, urban abandonment, rural prison economy, California prisons, overcrowding, cruel and unusual punishment, San Quentin, Kern Valley, Delano II, ES21AC, Ethnic Studies 21AC, UC Berkeley