Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion

Description

The growth of mass incarceration in the United States eludes neat categorization as a product of the political Right. Liberals played important roles in both laying the foundation for and then participating in the conservative tough on crime movement that is largely credited with the rise of the prison state. But what of those politicians and activists on the Left who reject punitive politics in favor of rehabilitation and a stronger welfare state? Can progressive policies such as these, with their benevolent intentions, nevertheless contribute to the expansion of mass incarceration? In Progressive Punishment, Judah Schept offers an ethnographic examination into the politics of incarceration in Bloomington, Indiana in order to consider the ways that liberal discourses about therapeutic justice and rehabilitation can uphold the logics, practices and institutions that comprise the carceral state. Schept examines how political leaders on the Left, despite being critical of mass incarceration, advocated for a “justice campus” that would have dramatically expanded the local criminal justice system. At the root of this proposal, Schept argues, is a confluence of neoliberal-style changes in the community that naturalized prison expansion as political common sense among leaders negotiating crises of deindustrialization, urban decline, and the devolution of social welfare. In spite of the momentum that the proposal gained, Schept uncovers resistance among community organizers, who developed important strategies and discourses to challenge the justice campus, disrupt some of the logics that provided it legitimacy, and offer new possibilities for a non-carceral community. A well-researched and well-narrated study, Progressive Punishment offers a novel perspective on the relationship between liberal politics, neoliberalism, and mass incarceration. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 8 Introduction......Page 12 PART 1. NEOLIBERAL GEOGRAPHIES OF PROGRESSIVE PUNISHMENT......Page 42 1. Capital Departures and the Arrival of Punishment......Page 48 2. Consolidations and Expansions: Welfare and the “Alternatives” Archipelago......Page 60 PART 2. “POOR CONDUCT” AND THE CARCERAL CURE......Page 78 3. “Red Neck” and “Unsocialized,” with “Subcultural Norms and Values”: Constructing Cultural Poverty and Caring Cages......Page 82 4. “A Lockdown Facility . . . with the Feel of a Small, Private College”......Page 107 PART 3. CARCERAL EPISTEMOLOGY: KNOWING THE JAIL AND GOVERNING THE TOWN......Page 130 5. Seeing like a Jail, 1: Evidence and Expertise......Page 136 6. Seeing like a Jail, 2: Corrections Consulting......Page 151 7. Governing through Expansion......Page 173 PART 4. CONTESTING THE CARCERAL......Page 204 8. Organizing against Expansion......Page 206 Conclusion: Nonreformist Reforms and Abolitionist Alternatives......Page 246 Epilogue......Page 264 Notes......Page 268 Selected Bibliography......Page 290 B......Page 312 D......Page 313 F......Page 314 J......Page 315 L......Page 316 P......Page 317 R......Page 318 Y......Page 319 About the Author......Page 320