Introduction: Constructing the Carceral State
Abstract
The United States holds the world's largest prison population, caging more humans than any other nation on earth. In a situation that is not only internationally unparalleled but also historically unprecedented, every day more than 2 million people are barred somewhere within this nation's vast archipelago of prisons, jails, and immigrant detention centers. Another 7.2 million are on probation, on parole, or under a deportation order. This is not just any population. The majority of those confined in a U.S. correctional facility are black or brown, and poor. Indeed blacks and Latinos make up 72 percent of the federal prison population and the majority of the state prison populations. By the end of this year, one in three young African American males and one in six young Latino males will be locked away from society. The numbers for women of color versus white women are also stark: 133 of 100,000 African American women and 77 of 100,000 Latinas are locked up as compared with only 47 of 100,000 white women.1 The racial demographics of immigrant detention are equally dire. More than 80 percent of immigration detainees are Latinos, namely Mexicans or Central Americans.
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New abolition, criminology and a critical carceral studies
Brown, M., & Schept, J. (2017) · Punishment & Society · doi:10.1177/1462474516666281 · Cited by 165 · see citing works
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“…2008; Grasso, 2017; Walker, 2014; Weaver and Lerman, 2010), geography (e.g. Peck, 2003), anthropology (e.g. Gilmore, 1999), history (e.g. Hernández et al., 2015; Lichtenstein, 2011; Thompson, 2010; Thompson and Murch, 2015), gender studies (e.g. McKim, 2014), and philosophy (e.g.…”
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“…historian Dan Berger (2019) distinguishes more clearly between penal and car-ceral states by arguing that carceral state is the broader term, encompassing more institutions and a longer timescale than the more narrow term penal state (see also Foucault 1995; Hernández et al. 2015; Simon 2007a).”
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- Authors
- Hernandez, K. L., Muhammad, K. G., & Ann Thompson, H.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- ORCID
- Hernandez, K. L.
- Venue
- Journal of American History
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2015-06-01
- Volume
- 102
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 18-24
- ISSN
- 0021-8723 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2308870369
- Semantic Scholar
- f1be565c077d6575bf1b37d9b76e2d5d5c933ac0
- Cited by
- 58
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 8.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of American History (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Race, History, and American Society
- Keywords
- carceral state, mass incarceration, prison population, racial disparities in incarceration, African American men, Hispanic men, immigration detention, deportation
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