Stratified Mobilities: Structural and Person-Level Variation in Prison Transfers

• In Event: Movement and Isolation: Institutional Practices of Transfers and Segregation in Prisons

Abstract

Incarceration produces stratification not only outside prison walls, but also within them. In this paper, I illustrate variation in a largely overlooked aspect of prison experience: transfers between prisons. Past literature suggests that transfers are common and their process subjugating, with intensive shackling and uncomfortable journeys. However, not all transfers are made equally; transfers happen for various reasons and affect distance from home and security level. Using a novel dataset produced by linking administrative records from New York's state prisons, this paper begins by demonstrating the scale of transfers and system-level patterns in their flows. Within this context, I next demonstrate that transfers are a vector of person-level stratification in prison experience in three respects. First, they are unequally deployed, with younger people, people with short sentences, and people early in their sentence transferring more often than their peers. Second, disaggregating transfers reveals that people of color and people with long sentences experience harsher transfers—moving more often for disciplinary reasons or to higher security prisons. Finally, I show that, on average, transfers fail to reduce distance from home. Altogether, these findings reveal transfers as an undertheorized mechanism of stratification in prison, with potential effects on incarcerated people’s long-term outcomes.

Author

• Iolanthe Brooks, Northwestern University