Prison Capital

“Pelot-Hobbs convincingly demonstrates that actors at multiple levels and jurisdictions of government aided Louisiana’s carceral expansion. . . . [A] pathbreaking study of Louisiana’s metastasizing carceral landscape.”—American Historical Review

“In demystifying how the contemporary carceral behemoth got set into place, Prison Capital offers a vital roadmap for the best targets, strategies, and political messaging needed to establish abolitionist futures.”—Journal of African American History

“Prison Capital is a meticulously researched and well-written book that reveals how mass incarceration has been shaped by various interconnected economic, political, and social systems and by crises. The author skillfully weaves together the actors, groups, and forces involved in this complex issue. . . . [A]n authoritative monograph that will appeal to students and scholars in fields like history, law, sociology, and criminology.”—Journal of Southern History

“An engrossing and disturbing account of mass incarceration in Louisiana that primarily covers the 1970s onward. . . . [T]his book is not simply a dry academic account, but rather a passionate but scholarly cry for social justice. . . . Prison Capital is a work of serious scholarship.”—Southeastern Librarian

“Insightful. . . . Scholars and abolitionists will find in Prison Capital historical, methodological, historiographical, and practical insights to better understand mass incarceration and its contestations.”—Southeastern Geographer

“Lydia Pelot-Hobbs presents a profound and compelling analysis that shows why neoliberal regimes of racialized security must be dissolved in Louisiana and everywhere, and her wonderfully rich accounts of grassroots prison abolitionist organizing point toward how these changes can come about and how we can, and must, participate in seeing them come to fruition.”—George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics

“Prison Capital is an urgent, elegant, and expert account of the making of one of the carceral capitals of the world. A model of research and analysis, this book is a pathbreaking contribution to carceral history and abolitionist politics. It is, by far, one of the best books on carceral economics I have ever read.”—Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity

“A vital rewriting of the conventional histories told popularly and academically by historians, criminologists, and legal scholars about shifts in penal history and struggles for abolition at the level of the US nation and the South.”—Michelle Brown, author of The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle

“Superb scholarship and a fascinating read. Prison Capital succeeds tremendously in explaining the buildup of the Louisiana prison population, the expansion of the state’s carceral capacity, and the underlying economic factors, state and municipal policies, and community activism behind it all.”—Rebecca Hill, author of Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History