Provides an explanation for the increase in number of people in US prisons by more than 450%. This book examines the issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity.
"A magnificent analysis of the political economy of superincarceration and the slave plantations that California calls prisons."--Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear
"Golden Gulag is a deeply necessary book for our times. Gilmore digs beneath the easy answers to the more troubling causes of a political consensus that prisons are the only solution to all urban and rural ills."--Nayan Shah, author of Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown
"Ruth Gilmore lays bare the diabolical logic of neoliberal incarceration. She shows us that the prison is a symptom of the decline of our civilization, how the California Nightmare has produced its disposable population. Gilmore's depressingly hopeful analysis is a wake-up call for our somnolence."--Vijay Prashad, author of Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare
"Gilmore’s historical, geographical, and organizational approach provides a useful point of reference for the state’s current efforts to downsize the prison population and relieve overcrowding. She encourages activists and scholars to consider previous institutional indiscretions when determining strategies for future reform."
