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.

This work is embargoed and will be available for download on Wednesday, September 30, 2026

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