The Jail is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration

Nearly every county and major city in the United States has a jail, the short-term detention center controlled by local sheriffs that funnels people into prisons and long-term incarceration. Jails are now the fastest-growing sector of the US carceral state. As jails grow, they transform the region around them. Whole towns and small cities see health care provision and employment opportunities become subordinate to carceral concerns. If jails are everywhere, resistance is too. Campaigns against new or expanded jails have emerged in large and mid-sized cities and in dozens of small towns and rural counties across the US. While there is some coordination and communication between those involved in these struggles, they tend to be isolated from each other and from broader movements. The Jail Is Everywhere brings together an incredible range of knowledge and experience from jail fights across the country. It maps this new terrain, foregrounding the hard-forged analyses of anti-jail organizers themselves as they take us through campaigns that, while appearing local, are at the new center of the carceral state. With a foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

Table of Contents:
Foreword - Ruth Wilson Gilmore Introduction: The Jail Is Everywhere - Jack Norton, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, and Judah Schept 1. A Quiet Jail Boom - Jasmine Heiss 2. The Long Fight Against Jail Expansion in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois - An Interview with James Kilgore of Build Programs Not Jails 3. County Jails and the Immigrant Dragnet - Silky Shah 4. Decarcerating Sacramento: Confronting Jail Expansion in California's Capital - Liz Blum 5. "Not One More Dollar Goes into This Jail": Becoming Abolitionists in Upstate New York - Andrew J. Pragacz and Kevin Revier 6. "You Start with Where You Are and with the People Who Are Around You": Organizing Against Jails Across Tennessee - An Interview with Dawn Harrington and Gicola Lane of Free Hearts 7. Carceral Communities: Local Resistance to the Prison-Industrial Complex in the Mountain South - Amelia Kirby 8. Communities Over Cages-the (Ongoing) Campaign to Close the Atlanta City Jail - Xochitl Bervera and Wes Ware 9. Federal Courts, FEMA Dollars, and Local Elections in the Struggle Against Phase III in New Orleans - An Interview with Lexi Peterson-Burge of Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition 10. Real Solutions: Organizing for Alternatives to a Big New Jail in a Small Republican County - Sarah Westover and Matt Witt 11. Lessons from the No New Jails Network and the New York City Struggle Against Carceral Feminism - An Interview with Mon Mohapatra of the No New Jails Network Conclusion: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration - Jack Norton, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, and Judah Schept Acknowledgments Appendix: "The County Jail" - Stanley Boone

About the Author :
Jack Norton is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Governors State University. Lydia Pelot-Hobbs is an Assistant Professor of Geography and African American & Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky, and author of Carceral Crisis: Punitive State Power, Racial Capitalism, and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana. Judah Schept is a Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia and Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion.

Review :
The impact of the editors' scholarship, and the relationships they built while carrying it out, are palpable throughout The Jail Is Everywhere, lending the book a groundedness and sense of communal purpose that is all too rare in academic studies of mass incarceration. A collection of writing spotlighting the 'monster' that is the American prison system...Social justice activists and those with an interest in criminal justice issues will especially appreciate these well-researched, thoughtful essays that reveal just how much power government policies have given to the American carceral system. [The Jail is Everywhere] paints a vivid picture of a grassroots, nationwide decarceral movement. Activists involved on the ground will find this valuable, while others will receive a substantial education in the politics and economics of incarceration. With its bevy of perspectives and individual case studies, The Jail Is Everywhere is a revealing overview of the growing problem of jail expansion in the US, with a survey of approaches to addressing it. The Jail Is Everywhere is a vibrant collection that equips the reader, and anyone interested in organizing against the many forms of carceral expansion, with a swathe of helpful strategies and tactics ... a crucial anthology, skillfully assembled. A remarkably refreshing read, rooted in the messy but everyday realities of abolitionist organizing. The Jail Is Everywhere demonstrates that knowledge about the function of the carceral state and its multi-tentacled reach into U.S. politics, economy, and culture can only truly be unearthed through active struggle. This is not only an important book for people who want to understand the operation of the current carceral state. It's a critical read for folks who might be fighting prison expansion or construction in their neighborhoods.