Key Concepts and Definitions

Workhouse

• Institutions as alternative to prisons in the 18th century.
• Forced labor aimed at disciplinary training for capitalist production.
• Sought to break working-class resistance.
• Principle of Least Eligibility.

Women’s House of Detention Protest of 1970

• Social movements uniting with imprisoned and police violence victims.

Welfare Mothers

• 1980s neoliberal debate: welfare eroded work ethic, leading to criminal youth.

Warehouse Prisons

• Transformation during mass incarceration to maximize capacity and security.

War on Crime

• Institutional cause of mass incarceration.
• Backlash against Civil Rights Movement and the "War on Poverty".
• Linked to urban decline and technology of expulsion.
• Drew on myths: Repayment, Reform, Removal, Racial threat.
• Nixon's "war on drugs" expanded federal jurisdiction.

Urban Crisis

• Associated with expulsion in late 20th century.
• Linked to deindustrialization and neoliberal city.
• High homicide rates contributed to punitive turn and death penalty revitalization.

“Toxic Cocktail” of Mass Incarceration

• Severe conditions in California prisons: chronic illnesses, drug use, aging, poor healthcare, overcrowding.

Total Incapacitation

• Transformation in prisons during mass incarceration.
• Treating all prisoners as threats.
• Extended control: 24/7 surveillance, lengthy sentences.
• Solitary confinement for deterrence, not rehabilitation.

Surpluses (of the California Prison Boom)

• Built from surplus finance capital, labor, land, and political action.

Reformist Reforms

• Work within carceral structures to improve them.

Sterilization

• Practice in the Eugenics arc.
• Viewed as solution for the "degenerate".
• Dr. Leo Stanley performed eugenic sterilization at San Quentin.

Sovereignty

• Political technology of Public Justice arc (12th century).
• Myth of repayment: crime creates debt to the sovereign.
• Courts and prosecutors are institutions of Sovereignty.
• "Slaves of the state" doctrine aligns.

Social Uplift

• Ideology in Progressive era juvenile courts focusing on reform and rehabilitation.

Social Control

• Progressive era juvenile courts separated reformable from irredeemable.

Security Housing Unit (Solitary Confinement)

• Transformation in prisons during mass incarceration.
• Used for deterrence and incapacitation.
• Pelican Bay SHU example.
• Target of prisoner resistance.

Rights Movements

• Forms of resistance within prisons.
• Civil rights lawyers key.

Revolutionary Politics

• Activism led by George Jackson (Black Panther party, Black Guerilla Family).
• Prisoners as a "revolutionary class".
• Inspired increased securitization and links between prisoners and oppressed communities.

Resistance (Prisoner)

• Escapes, strikes, riots existed before 1960s reforms.
• George Jackson's activism and death prominent examples.

Reentry

• Post-confinement supervision to reduce recidivism.
• Merged with county probation in California.
• Viewed as an extension of the carceral state transforming the poor into a disposable labor force.

Reconstruction

• Historical period leading to Convict Lease and Mass Incarceration.
• Myth of racial threat.
• Convict leasing seen as continuation of slavery or response to Black freedom.

Recidivism

• High rate described as a "feature not a bug".
• Modern probation aims to reduce recidivism.
• Reentry programs also aimed reducing recidivism.

Realignment

• California initiated decline in state prison populations.
• Increased county jail population.
• "Penal devolution" disinvesting in supervised population.

Racial Profiling

• "New technology of power" in racial profiling arc.
• Linked to Slavery, Reconstruction, Civil Rights Era.
• Associated with the Plantation, Convict Lease, and Mass Incarceration.

Racial Disparity in Punishment

• Feature of the "war on crime".
• Increased when subordinate groups challenged dominant groups.

Racial Capitalism

• Extension of Marxist approaches.
• Highlights the intertwined nature of race and political economy.
• US carceral state as a tool for punitive governance of racialized poor.

Quantitative Face of Mass Incarceration

• Statistical dimensions of mass incarceration.
• 4-5 times increase in incarceration rate (1975-2005).
• Nine-fold Black to White imprisonment ratio.

Qualitative Face of Mass Incarceration

• Conditions within carceral system: overcrowding, solitary confinement, inadequate healthcare.

Punitive Myths

• Legal-rational justifications about crime and punishment.
• Repayment, Reform, Removal, Reinforcement, Racial Threat.

Proposition 47

• California reform measure contributing to decline in prison population.
• Reduced felony probation cases, Realignment ensured flow of cases.

Progressive Era

• Associated with Eugenics arc.
• Institutions: probation, parole, juvenile courts, sterilization.
• Combined social uplift and control.

Probation

• Developed during Eugenics arc.
• Frontline officers with discretion.
• Focus on accountability, rehabilitation, and reducing recidivism.

Prisoners’ Rights Litigation

• Court challenges to prison conditions.
• Fueled by civil rights lawyers, draft resisters, Black Muslim prisoners.

Prison Overcrowding

• Persistent problem in California penal system.
• Defining characteristic of prisons in the mass incarceration era.

Political Technologies

• Each arc has a technology of power.
• Sovereignty, Discipline, Eugenics, Expulsion, Racial Governance.

Prison Litigation Reform Act

• Federal law restricting prisoner access to federal courts.

“Prison Fix”

• Ruth Wilson Gilmore's concept explaining California prison system using societal surpluses.

Prison Conditions

• Overcrowding, solitary confinement, inadequate medical care.
• The 'toxic cocktail'.

Principle of Least Eligibility

• Conditions for public assistance should be less desirable than lowest-paid laborers.

Primitive Accumulation

• Separation of producers from means of production.
• Led to forced labor in prisons and penal colonies.

Preservation Through Transformation

• Jim Crow system maintained by transforming institutional form.
• Mass incarceration preserved racial order.

PIC Abolition

• Goal: abolishing Prison Industrial Complex.
• Pursued through abolitionist reforms.

Penal Devolution

• Realignment in California is a form of penal devolution.
• Transferring responsibility to counties.

Penal Colony

• Forced labor in penal colonies replaced capital punishments.

Peculiar Apparatus

• Myth of repayment disguises devastating effect on punishment.

Panopticon

• A prison design embodying discipline.
• Constant surveillance, correctional training, individualization.

Non-Reformist Reforms

• Aim to dismantle carceral state.
• Focusing on social resources.

Neoliberalism

• Social change contributing to mass incarceration.
• Linked to remaking of neoliberal city.

Negative Eugenics

• Removing or preventing reproduction of the "unfit".
• Sterilization.

Myth of Repayment

• Crime creates debt to the sovereign.
• Obscures connection between punishment and harm to victim.

Myth of Removal

• A minority of "deviant" offenders pose the greatest threat.

Myth of Reinforcement

• Punishment prevents neighborhoods from tipping into disorder.

Myth of Reform/Rehabilitation

• Crime result of bad habits and punishment instills good habits.

Abolition Movements

• Movements opposing penal institutions.
• Linking crime to social structures rather than individual pathology.

Biblio-Therapy

• Psychological treatment in prisons during rehabilitation age.

American Exceptionalism

• Questioning why the US retains the death penalty.

Anti-Black Racism

• Linked to eugenic myth of racial criminal propensity.
• Contributes to mistrust of juvenile justice system.
• Carceral state is a history of race as caste.

Attica Riot/Uprising

• Sparked by George Jackson's death.

Bio-Medical Treatment (in Prison)

• Associated with Dr. Leo Stanley and eugenics.

Broken Windows

• Technology of power in expulsion arc.
• Linked to punitive myth of "reinforcement".

Brown v. Plata (Supreme Court 2011)

• Culmination of the crisis of medical neglect in California prisons.
• Justice Kennedy emphasized human dignity.
• Led to Realignment.

California’s Punitive Turn

• Political shift to the right (1975-1995).
• Move to determinate sentencing.
• Foundation for prison building.

California’s Prison Reform “Moment” (2009-2019)

• Peak and decline in imprisonment rates.
• Realignment and propositions 47/57.

Carceral State

• Stylized image encompassing prisons, courts, police, and more.
• History of the carceral state is presented as a history of race.

Chronic/Hyper Overcrowding

• Transformation in prisons.
• Humanitarian crises.

Caste

• Race as an American "caste system".
• Mass incarceration preserving caste.

Cesare Beccaria

• Argued against imprisonment prior to conviction.

Common (or Collective) Conscience

• Durkheim: institutions survive even when they no longer correspond.

Convict Leasing

• Prominent in former Confederate states.
• Overwhelmingly used against Black people.
• Either as preservation of slavery or response to Black freedom.

Correctional Training

• Component of "Discipline" technology.

Crack Cocaine

• Not explicitly mentioned.

Criminal Justice System

• Associated with expulsion and mass incarceration.

Crises

• Key element driving shifts in penal institutions.

Crisis of Mass Incarceration

• Criticized for racism, ineffectiveness, costliness, and inhumanity.

Critical Resistance Conference of 1998

• Social movement associated with abolitionist reform.

Degeneracy (Degenerates)

• Hereditary theory of crime.

Discipline

• Creating a working class.
• Surveillance and corrective training.

European Way of Seeing Things

• Kafka's penal colony depicting automated punishment.

Dr. Leo Stanley

• San Quentin; prison medicine, eugenics, bio-medical interventions.

Due Process Revolution

• Series of Supreme Court decisions.

Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia) Auburn Penitentiary (New York)

• Key models of the penitentiary.

Enlightenment

• Cesare Beccaria, a key figure of the Enlightenment.

Eugenics

• Early 20th century.
• Myths in cluded racial criminal propensity of Black and immigrant populations, removal.

Furman v. Georgia (Supreme Court 1972)

• Punishments that treat individuals as nonhumans are inconsistent with Eight Amendment.

Evolving Standards of Decency

• From Supreme Court case Trop v. Dulles (1958) and use as theory constitutional interpretation against the death penalty.

Evidence Based Practices

• Strategies supported by scientific research aimed at reducing recidivism.

Expulsion

• Late 20th century.
• Urban decline and remaking of the neoliberal city.

Experimentation

• Prisons as sites of experimentation.

Fear of Crime

• Causes of mass incarceration.

George Jackson

• Revolutionary leader among Black prisoners.
• Black prisoners the lowest.

Great Migration

• Mentioned in reference to "criminalized populations" and the "racialized paradigm of punitive governance of the poor".

Guided Discretion

• Not explicitly defined.

Hands Off Doctrine

• Historical era when courts did not intervene in prison administration.

Human Dignity

• Key concept in Brown v. Plata.

Idleness

• Crime results from bad habits from idleness.

Indeterminate Sentencing

• Sentencing system during Progressive era.

Jeremy Bentham

• Not explicitly mentioned.

Juvenile Court (Juvenile Justice)

• Punitive institutions in early 20th century.
• Eugenics.

Labor Markets

• Changes drive penal law and institutions.

Law and Order

• Substitute for segregation.

Life Without Parole (LWOP)

• Transformation in penal institutions during mass incarceration.

Los Angeles (Watts) Riot/Uprising

• In California during arc of expulsion.

Mass Incarceration (Mass Imprisonment)

• Historical arc beginning in the late 20th century.
• Urban decline and deindustrialization.

McCleskey v. Kemp (Supreme Court 1986)

• Statistical evidence showing racial disparities was insufficient.

Moral Panic

• Moral panic about crime in post-pandemic era.

Quantitative Law of Penal Evolution

• Durkieim's ideas