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.

List 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, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, and Judah Schept

Product details

• Authors: Jack Norton, Jack Pelot-Hobbs Norton, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Judah Schept, Schept Judah
• Assisted by: Gilmore Ruth Wilson (Foreword)
• Publisher: Verso
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2024
• EAN: 9781804291313
• ISBN: 978-1-80429-131-3
• No. of pages: 208
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; USA, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Penology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Services, The environment, Social welfare & social services, Social discrimination & inequality, United States of America, USA, Penology and punishment, Human Geography, Development Studies, Penology & punishment, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination, Offenders, Development and environmental geography, Social discrimination and social justice, Social welfare, social policy and social services, Offenders / Criminals