Rise of the Rural Ghetto: Race, Disadvantage, and the Politics of Prison Proliferation
Since 1970, the U.S. has set an unparalleled pace of prison building nearly tripling the total number of facilities by constructing more than 1200 new prisons. More than 70% of the facilities constructed during the prison boom have been in rural areas. Forty years ago, most rural towns viewed prisons as a stigmatized institution and rejected placement. This trend shifted in regards to correctional facilities with some rural towns lobbying to win the placement of a prison. What caused this shift from NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) to PIMBY (Please in My Backyard)? “I don’t want my town to end like Gary”, lamented a long-time resident and African-American political leader of a rural Southern community when asked why he advocated for a prison to be constructed in his town. To many, this remark would be understood as a quip because Gary has become an icon of urban decline—a punch line of bad jokes about the evils of the inner city and the ghetto. In comparing his town to Gary, Indiana, this leader reflects the dire need to change the course of his beloved home. Rise of the Rural Ghetto investigates prison proliferation and the emergence of the rural ghetto in that process. Specifically, this book addresses the challenges presented by the sharp increase in rural Southern concentrated poverty in the post-civil rights era (between1970-2000) and the subsequent proliferation of prisons in this same region.
To investigate this question in the summer of 2007 I relocated my family from Chicago to Forrest City, Arkansas (population 14, 078) to understand why town leaders would pursue a prison. I imagined conditions described by contemporary rural southern ethnographies that portray these as high poverty communities with race/class conflicts. While I did find conditions similar to those described in many works on rural southern life, I also found what can only be regarded as a ghetto with characteristics similar to those described in classic urban sociological literature— characteristics like concentrated poverty, racial segregation, and high crime. While signs of disorder and violence in Chicago neighborhoods are well-documented by social scientists and are often more apparent, in certain neighborhoods in my case study, violence seemed to lie just beneath an otherwise serene surface. In addition to having a murder rate on par with Chicago from1985-2005 (roughly 30 persons/100,000) and a high degree of residential segregation more than a third of the rental properties in the Forrest City are public or subsidized housing. Subtle signs of race/class conflict are also evident in the vestiges of Jim Crow and slavery displayed by dawning of confederate flags on public buildings or during events like the Cotton Pickin’ festival.
Drawing from ethnographic, quantitative, and archival data including a case study of a rural Southern town, in Rise of the Rural Ghetto I show that the emergence of the rural ghetto provides a context ripe for prison proliferation. To understand how these processes unfold I begin by tracing the emergence of the rural ghetto. By mapping the prison boom, I reveal that prisons are more likely to be placed in poor, Southern towns having larger percentages of Blacks and Hispanics. Given the economic constraints faced by many rural communities stigmatized by concentrated racial and economic disadvantage, I contend prison ‘demand’ is based on managing spoiled town identity resulting from the emergence of the rural ghetto. By investigating the politics of prison placement, I document how Black race leaders and White elites form a growth coalition to recruit a prison. Surprisingly, despite the negative stigma associated with prisons, rural community leaders produce a groundswell in supporting placement by framing the prison as a way to save the community from continued economic decline. I suggest that while many local leaders portray the prison as a windfall, residents have more mixed reaction to prison placement. In addition to local perceptions, I analysis prison placement from1970-2006 detailing how prisons slow economic decline in poor communities further complicating the meaning of this stigmatized facility. In closing I discuss the policy implications of prison proliferation. Some trace the current economic crisis in states like North Carolina, California, and Michigan to the prison boom. These arguments are based on oversimplified understandings of rural ‘demand’ for prisons. I suggest that we reframe how we understand prison ‘demand’ because although prisons offer positive short-run economic benefits to local communities they also symbolize a lasting stigma of disadvantage creating a dynamic tension in depressed rural communities fighting for survival—a fight with communities that will make reducing the more than 1,700 U.S. prison facilities onerous.