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This chapter introduces the concept of the prison town—a nonmetropolitan municipality that has secured and constructed a prison for a federal, state, or private operator—as a strategic site to investigate the intersection of race, spatial disadvantage, and the expansion of the criminal justice system. Forty years ago, there were 511 prison facilities in the United States. Since then we have embarked on an unparalleled expansion, constructing 1,152 new facilities. This dramatic growth in prison building is known as the prison boom. Because prison building is often portrayed as a dichotomous decision for communities by describing the process that culminated in the placement of the Forrest City Federal Correctional Facility (FCFCF), I argue that we can begin to understand the multiple social, political, and economic shifts that drove the United States to triple prison construction in just over thirty years. Forrest City’s campaign to win a prison helps explain how rural communities get from NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) to PIMBY (Please in My Backyard).

This chapter discusses policy reform between 2008 and 2016 in the context of the Great Recession, Tea Party politics, the decreased salience of crime, and the high costs of incarceration. The chapter argues that Tea Party politics led to reform efforts by Florida conservatives and worsening conditions inside of prisons. It further finds that the colorblind project of the recession era precluded racial disparity in imprisonment or the collateral consequences of racialized imprisonment as a policy problem. In addition, it describes the challenges to reform created by the persistence of the carceral ethos, the complexity of penal policy after years of expansion, and the entrenched interests created by the growth of carceral capacity.

Chapter 4 examines how migrant detention became one part of the vast carceral landscape in Florence and Eloy, Arizona. Neither proximity to the border nor privatization adequately explains the patchwork of carceral facilities in this central Arizona locale. Rather, the landscape of migrant detention builds on multiple histories of confinement, including WWII prisoner of war camps and Florence’s status as Arizona’s prison town, thereby setting the stage to examine the growing interconnections between migrant detention and the burgeoning prison system. The chapter further explores the legal histories of expulsion that form the basis for the development of “criminal alien” legislation, bolstering rationales for detention construction.