Golden Gulag

Golden Gulag PDF Author: Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520938038
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.

Golden Gulag

Golden Gulag PDF Author: Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520938038
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.

Prisons, a California Crisis

Prisons, a California Crisis PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Prisons
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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California Prisons in Crisis, a CSEA Report

California Prisons in Crisis, a CSEA Report PDF Author: California State Employees' Association
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Prison riots
Languages : en
Pages :

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Solving California's Corrections Crisis

Solving California's Corrections Crisis PDF Author: Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 9781422315859
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
Calif.¿s correctional system is in a tailspin that threatens public safety & raises the risk of fiscal disaster. State prisons are packed beyond capacity. Inmates sleep in classrooms, gyms & hallways. Fed. judges control inmate med. care & oversee mental health, use of force, disabilities act compliance, dental care, parolee due process rights, & most aspects of the juvenile justice system. Thousands of local jail inmates are let out early every week as a result of overcrowding & court-ordered pop¿n. caps. A fed. judge has given the State 6 months to make progress on overcrowding or face the appoint. of a panel of fed. judges who will manage the prison pop¿n. This report makes recommend. to the Calif. State Leg. on how to resolve these problems. Illus.

The Toughest Beat

The Toughest Beat PDF Author: Joshua Page
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199985073
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
The Toughest Beat uses the rise of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the state's powerful prison officers' union, to explore the actors and interests that have created, shaped, and protected the Golden State's sprawling, dysfunctional penal system -- and how it might yet be transformed.

Confronting the Crisis

Confronting the Crisis PDF Author: University of San Francisco. School of Law : Law Review Symposium (2008 Mar. 15 : San Francisco, Calif.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Prisons
Languages : en
Pages :

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Inside the Broken California Prison System

Inside the Broken California Prison System PDF Author: Boston Woodard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780964700932
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Inside the Broken California Prison System by veteran jailhouse journalist Boston Woodard provides an insider 's view of California's dysfunctional prison industrial complex in crisis. On May 23, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that due to massive overcrowding, California is in violation of the Eighth Amendment, which constitutionally prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Because its 33 prisons are at nearly 200 percent capacity, the state has been ordered to release or find new accommodations for more than 30,000 prisoners within two years. With the harshest sentencing laws, toughest parole policy, and highest recidivism rate in the nation, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is a failure on all counts except for those who profit from the $10 billion spent annually to maintain it. Woodard describes how it came to this, as well as the day-to-day reality of the impact on prisoners in a corrupt system effectively accountable to no one.Inside the Broken California Prison System is a collection of more than 40 articles originally published over a period of six years in the Community Alliance, a small monthly newspaper in Fresno, California. They detail subjects such as restricted media access to prisoners, the brutal impact of overcrowding, medical and mental health treatment failures, rogue prison staff, religious and racial discrimination, an omnipotent prison guard union, and shipping prisoners out of state to private prisons. At the same time he offers real solutions to the overcrowding problem that would not endanger public safety.Woodard is a writer, musician, literacy tutor, event organizer, and prisoners rights advocate who has been writing about what goes on inside the California prison system for almost two decades in both free world and prison publications. His articles have embarrassed and angered prison officials used to operating without public oversight, and he 's paid a price for exercising his First Amendment right to define his surroundings. He 's been put in the Hole, had his mail tampered with, lost his typewriter, subjected to verbal threats, had his personal property stolen or destroyed, and been illegally and adversely transferred from prison to prison. Still he refuses to be intimidated. My writing is not about prison rights, he says. It 's about the public 's right to know about the good and bad within these prison walls and how their money is being spent. It 's also about the positive efforts of men and women given up for lost by society. I just want the guards and prison officials to do what is demanded of me and every other prisoner in the system, and that is to obey the law and follow the regulations.

Symposium

Symposium PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Prisons
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Incarcerating the Crisis

Incarcerating the Crisis PDF Author: Jordan T. Camp
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520281829
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The United States currently has the largest prison population on the planet. Over the last four decades, structural unemployment, concentrated urban poverty, and mass homelessness have also become permanent features of the political economy. These developments are without historical precedent, but not without historical explanation. In this searing critique, Jordan T. Camp traces the rise of the neoliberal carceral state through a series of turning points in U.S. history including the Watts insurrection in 1965, the Detroit rebellion in 1967, the Attica uprising in 1971, the Los Angeles revolt in 1992, and events in post-Katrina New Orleans in 2005. Incarcerating the Crisis argues that these dramatic events coincided with the emergence of neoliberal capitalism and the state’s attempts to crush radical social movements. Through an examination of the poetic visions of social movements—including those by James Baldwin, Marvin Gaye, June Jordan, José Ramírez, and Sunni Patterson—it also suggests that alternative outcomes have been and continue to be possible.

A Realistic Solution to California's Prison Crisis

A Realistic Solution to California's Prison Crisis PDF Author: Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety (Calif.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Prison administration
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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