Punishing Places applies a unique spatial analysis to mass
incarceration in the United States. It demonstrates that our highest
imprisonment rates are now in small cities, suburbs, and rural areas.
Jessica Simes argues that mass incarceration should be conceptualized
as one of the legacies of U.S. racial residential segregation, but
that a focus on large cities has diverted vital scholarly and policy
attention away from communities affected most by mass incarceration
today. This book presents novel measures for estimating the
community-level effects of incarceration using spatial, quantitative,
and qualitative methods. This analysis has broad and urgent
implications for policy reforms aimed at ameliorating the community
effects of mass incarceration and promoting alternatives to the
carceral system.
