Progressive punishment : job loss, jail growth, and the neoliberal logic of carceral expansion / Judah Schept.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-299) and index.

Print version record.

Part 1. Neoliberal geographies of progressive punishment -- Capital departures and the arrival of punishment -- Consolidations and expansions: Welfare and the "alternatives" archipelago -- Part 2. "Poor conduct" and the carceral cure -- "Red neck" and "unsocialized," with "subcultural norms and values": Constructing cultural poverty and caring cages -- "A lockdown facility ... with the feel of a small, private college" -- Part 3. Carceral epistemology: Knowing the jail and governing the town -- Seeing like a jail, 1: Evidence and expertise -- Seeing like a jail, 2: Corrections consulting -- Governing through expansion -- Part 4. Contesting the carceral -- Organizing against expansion -- Conclusion: Nonreformist reforms and abolitionist alternatives.

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 can progressive polities, with their benevolent intentions, nevertheless contribute to the expansion of mass incarceration? In Progressive Punishment, Judah Schept offers an ethnographic examination into that liberal discourses about therapeutic justice and rehabilitation can uphold the logic, 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 for a community negotiating deindustrialization, urban decline, and the devolution of social welfare. While the proposal gained momentum, local activists worked to disrupt the logic of expansion and instead offer alternatives to reduce community reliance on incarceration. A well-researched and well-narrated study, Progressive Punishment provides an important and novel perspective on the relationship between liberal politics, neoliberalism, and mass incarceration. -- from back cover.

English.

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