Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Advisor
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Committee Members
Orisanmi Burton
Karen Miller
Monica Varsanyi
Subject Categories
Criminology and Criminal Justice | Human Geography
Keywords
Prisons, Social Movements, Insurgency, Counterinsurgency, Solitary Confinement, Carceral Geography
Abstract
This dissertation project concerns the geographies of counterinsurgency in California’s super-maximum-security prisons. I argue that these facilities – the first of which opened in the mid-1980s, and which were more repressive and isolating than any of California’s existing prisons – were explicitly developed in response to powerful organizing by people in prison. As early as 1973, corrections administrators and prison officers argued that dangerous prison gangs, organized along racial and geographical lines, were behind prisoner militancy, and advocated for expansive security measures including indefinite confinement in supermax prisons. I demonstrate, however, that officers and administrators deliberately promoted conflict, attempting to orchestrate racist violence between prisoners, to create the conditions for this threat.
This dissertation draws from the Prison Law Archive, evidence that has never before been analyzed by scholars. This new archive – which I co-founded in 2020 – overs an unprecedented look into the rise of supermax confinement in California and opposition to it.
Recommended Citation
Jones, Stephen, "Race, Rebellion, and Counterinsurgency: California's Supermax Prisons" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6028
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