Golden Gulag

by Gilmore, Ruth Wilson

• ISBN13: 9780520242012
• ISBN10: 0520242017
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world."Golden Gulagprovides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California's economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results--a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number off incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law--pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world.Golden Gulagprovides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state's commitment to prison expansion.

Author Biography

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Associate Professor of Geography and Director of the Program in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Tables	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
List of Abbreviations	xxi
PROLOGUE: The Bus	1	(4)
1. Introduction	5	(25)
2. The California Political Economy	30	(57)
3. The Prison Fix	87	(41)
4. Crime, Croplands, and Capitalism	128	(53)
5. Mothers Reclaiming Our Children	181	(60)
6. What Is to Be Done?	241	(8)
EPILOGUE: Another Bus	249	(4)
Notes	253	(28)
Bibliography and References	281	(74)
Index	355