The United States
has poured over a billion dollars into a network of interagency
intelligence centers called “fusion centers.” These centers were
ostensibly set up to prevent terrorism, but politicians, the press,
and policy advocates have criticized them for failing on this
account. So why do these security systems persist? Pacifying the
Homeland travels inside the secret world of intelligence fusion,
looks beyond the apparent failure of fusion centers, and reveals a
broader shift away from mass incarceration and toward a more
surveillance- and police-intensive system of social regulation.
Provided with
unprecedented access to domestic intelligence centers, Brendan
McQuade uncovers how the institutionalization of intelligence fusion
enables decarceration without fully addressing the underlying social
problems at the root of mass incarceration. The result is a startling
analysis that contributes to the debates on surveillance, mass
incarceration, and policing and challenges readers to see
surveillance, policing, mass incarceration, and the security state in
an entirely new light.