The Jail is Everywhere

Description

A VITAL COLLECTION FROM A KEY BATTLEGROUND IN THE ABOLITION STRUGGLE: THE COUNTY JAIL

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. While the growing movement against incarceration and policing has called to reform or abolish prisons, jails have often gone unnoticed, or in some cases seen as a “better” alternative to prisons.”

Yet jails, in recent decades, have been the fastest-growing sector of the US carceral state. Jails are widely used for immigrant detention by ICE and the U.S. Marshals and as a place to offload people that prisons can’t hold. As jails grow, they transform the region around them, and whole towns and small cities see health care, mental health care, substance abuse, and employment opportunities taken over by carceral concerns.

If jails are everywhere, resistance to jails is too. The recent jail boom has sparked a wealth of local activist struggles to resist and close jails all across the United States, from rural counties to major cities. 

The Jail Is Everywhere brings these disparate voices together, with contributions from activists, scholars, and expert journalists describing the effects of this quiet jail boom, mapping the growth of the carceral state, and sharing strategies from recent fights against jail construction to strengthen struggles against jailing everywhere.

With a foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore.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”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.”
—Kirkus

“[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.”
—Publishers Weekly

“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.”
—Foreword Reviews

“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.”
—Carceral Geography Working Group

“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.”
—Charlotte Rosen, Inquest

“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.”
—Bill Littlefield, Arts FuseJack 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.GB

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