Consuming Carcerality: The Ethics and Perceptions of Carceral Residential Real Estate

• In Event: Consuming Carcerality: The Ethics, Tourism, and Pop Cultural Commodification of Carceral Spaces

Abstract

Work exploring the overlaps between the carceral system and the real estate industry is primarily focused on economic, political, and community-based impacts of building prisons in primarily small rural areas. Some have examined this from the perspectives of residents in would-be “prison towns” who express resistance based upon racial or ethnic concerns related to the “residents” of the prison. Others have considered whether promises of economic and community revitalization through employment opportunities lead to demonstrable change or amount to nothing more than cleverly disguised campaign platforms. More recently, abolitionists, human geographers, and spatial theorists have broadened these conversations to expose the importation of carceral logics, such as the selling or renting of former carceral spaces, into real estate. This consumption of carcerality has produced a “progressive dystopia” (Shange, 2017: 2) in which carceral spaces are rebranded as quirky or eclectic real estate “gems” (Weber, 2023). Analyzing 15 former carceral spaces listed as residences and the public reactions surrounding the listings, this paper interrogates the blurring of carcerality and residential real estate. Specifically, we question the ethics of residential carceral consumption and argue its inseparability from violent histories imbued in the construction of carceral spaces.

Authors

• Alessandra Early, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Nicole McKenna, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

• Lucas Alan Dietsche, Institute for Doctoral Studies for Visual Arts

• Alison Cox, East Carolina University

• Ashley Kilmer, Towson University