The Prison of Democracy - Race, Leavenworth, and the Culture of Law

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-0-520-29696-1
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 204 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 1000 g

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Built in the 1890s at the center of the nation, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary was designed specifically to be a replica of the US Capitol Building. But why? The Prison of Democracy explains the political significance of a prison built to mimic one of America’s monuments to democracy. Locating Leavenworth in memory, history, and law, the prison geographically sits at the borders of Indian Territory (1825–1854) and Bleeding Kansas (1854–1864), both sites of contestation over slavery and freedom. Author Sara M. Benson argues that Leavenworth reshaped the design of punishment in America by gradually normalizing state-inflicted violence against citizens. Leavenworth’s peculiar architecture illustrates the real roots of mass incarceration—as an explicitly race- and nation-building system that has been ingrained in the very fabric of US history rather than as part of a recent post-war racial history. The book sheds light on the truth of the painful relationship between the carceral state and democracy in the US—a relationship that thrives to this day.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Benson, Sara M.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie
• Rechtswissenschaften Strafrecht Kriminologie, Strafverfolgung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Demokratie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Introduction: The Idea of Leavenworth and the Prison of Democracy
1. The Architecture of Liberalism and the Origins of Carceral Democracy
2. Territorial Politics: Mass Incarceration and the Punitive Legacies of the
Indian Territory
3. Federal Punishment and the Legal Time of Bleeding Kansas
4. Prisons at the Border: The Political Geography of the
Mason-Dixon Line
5. Leavenworth’s Political Prisoners: Race, Resistance,
and the Prison’s Archive
Postscript: “Walls Turned Sideways Are Bridges”: Abolition Dreams
and the Prison’s Aftermath

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations Used in Notes
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Sara M. Benson is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at San Jose State University and teaches at Oakes College at the University of California, Santa Cruz.