How prisons became economic development strategies for rural
Appalachian communities
As the United States
began the project of mass incarceration, rural communities turned to
building prisons as a strategy for economic development. More than
350 prisons have been built in the U.S. since 1980, with certain
regions of the country accounting for large shares of this dramatic
growth. Central Appalachia is one such region; there are eight
prisons alone in Eastern Kentucky. If Kentucky were its own country,
it would have the seventh highest incarceration rate in the world. In
Coal, Cages, Crisis, Judah Schept takes a closer look at this
stunning phenomenon, providing insight into prison growth, jail
expansion and rising incarceration rates in America’s hinterlands.
Drawing on
interviews, site visits, and archival research, Schept traces recent
prison growth in the region to the rapid decline of its coal
industry. He takes us inside this startling transformation occurring
in the coalfields, where prisons are often built on top of old
coalmines, including mountaintop removal sites, and built into
community planning approaches to crises of unemployment, population
loss, and declining revenues. By linking prison growth to other sites
in this landscape—coal mines, coal waste, landfills, and
incinerators—Schept shows that the prison boom has less to do with
crime and punishment and much more with the overall extraction,
depletion, and waste disposal processes that characterize dominant
development strategies for the region.
Schept argues that
the future of this area now hangs in the balance, detailing recent
efforts to oppose its carceral growth. Coal, Cages, Crisis
offers invaluable insight into the complex dynamics of mass
incarceration that continue to shape Appalachia and the broader
United States.