Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (American Crossroads) [Paperback]

Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0520242017 | ISBN-13: 978-0520242012 | Edition: 1

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom.
In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California's economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results--a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law--pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state's commitment to prison expansion.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A magnificent analysis of the political economy of super-incarceration 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"

From the Inside Flap

"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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 412 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (January 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520242017
• ISBN-13: 978-0520242012
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #107,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book...a must read! December 29, 2006

By Reader

Format:Paperback

Ruthie Gilmore's examination of California's prison-industrial complex paints a sobering portrait of the effects of the state's post-industrial decline in the past quarter century. Supplemented by numerous charts, maps, and statistics, Gilmore argues that the massive prison-building project that began in the early 1980s was rooted in earlier developments, namely the failure of the "welfare-warfare state" to absorb the numerous surpluses created by political and economic restructuring. Combining theory and historical-sociological analysis, this highly readable book is at once depressing and optimistic; it lays out the facts and guidelines for pursuing meaningful, antiracist struggles against the systemic dehumanization of immigrants, low-wage workers, and youths of color that continues to characterize U.S. political culture.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars bought for another February 18, 2007

By Richard Mudge

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

i purchased for a friend who is an inmate

he has praised the book to me

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Genealogy of California's Prison-Industrial Complex December 20, 2012

By Neil Sch

Format:Paperback

If you were to drive through the nine hundred miles of California's Highway 99, pejoratively known as "prison alley," you would pass 33 major prisons, 23 of which were built after 1984, and 57 smaller prisons or camps, 24 of which were also constructed after 1984. What was the impetus for liberal California initiating the largest prison construction program known to man, at a cost of $280 to $350 million per prison? Scholar, activist and prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore provides a convincing and exhaustive analysis of California's massive prison boom. A geographer by training, she employs a variety of conflict theorists--Marx in particular--to deconstruct modernity itself, and the central role imprisonment plays in the contemporary, secular state.

Gilmore's analysis leads her to conclude that California's prison industry was the product of surplus land, finance capital, labor, and state capacity. In brief, during the Cold War, the federal government subsidized California's military industrial complex, producing a "military Keynesianism" (or a "welfare warfare" economy) which enabled California to keep unemployment low and provided the state ample revenue to invest in public education and social programs. When federal subsidies began to waver and corporate profits began declining in the early 1970s, California faced an economic and political "crisis." During times of "crisis," the idleness of capital, labor, land, etc. begins to accumulate, causing dangerous surpluses. In order to manage the "crisis," California enacted a social decision to exploit the accumulated surpluses towards the production of the current prison economy.

Despite some technical problems involving repeated statistics and an uneven narrative (partially written for academics, other parts for eager community activists), Gilmore's dense tome can be enthusiastically embraced by scholars, students, and for the enthusiastic lay-person. A note of caution--Gulag may prove to be overly cumbersome for some as much of it is derived from her doctoral dissertation. But for grassroots activists and everyone else who wish to engage with its complex, thorough analysis, Gulag equips its readers with a counter-narrative on race, mass incarceration, political economy and a radical deconstruction of society's prescription for crime.