Siting the Carceral State: The Spatial Logic of Prison and Immigration Detention Growth

• In Event: Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 15: Policing, Surveillance, and the Carceral State

Abstract

The dramatic rise in U.S. incarceration and the parallel expansion of immigration detention reshaped both the nation’s carceral landscape and the built environment of thousands of communities. While existing scholarship explains why imprisonment and civil confinement grew, far less research focuses on where these facilities were sited. Drawing on a novel spatial database of state and federal prisons alongside immigration detention facilities, this study examines the political-economic and demographic predictors of carceral expansion across rural, suburban, and metropolitan contexts. Specifically, I ask: what factors predict state and federal prison openings during the post-1970 prison boom? Are they similarly predictable across rural, urban, and suburban contexts? And how (if at all) do determinants differ by the type of facility (state prisons versus federal prisons versus immigrant detention facilities)? Preliminary results in metropolitan areas reveal a consistent spatial logic across facility type. Shifts in land use, especially the number of farmers in 1970, emerge as a strong predictor of prison openings, suggesting that carceral development frequently entailed the conversion of agricultural land into correctional infrastructure. I also find evidence of the repurposing of former state institutions, including asylums and military bases, for carceral uses. The institutionalized group quarters population consistently outperforms the presence of an existing prison as a predictor, underscoring the importance of institutional legacies. By directly comparing criminal incarceration and civil immigration detention, this study bridges disparate literatures and shows that the U.S. prison boom constituted a systematic transformation of both rural and metropolitan landscapes, embedding carceral expansion within broader processes of economic restructuring and spatial inequality.

Author

• Angel Mendiola Ross, Stanford University