Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Politics of Prison Growth: From Chain Gangs to Work Release Centers and Supemax Prisons, Florida, 1955 - 2005

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

Title: Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Politics of Prison Growth: From Chain Gangs to Work Release Centers and Supermax Prisons, Florida, 1955 to 2005 Principle Investigator: John Hagan; Co-investigator: Heather Schoenfeld Abstract The United States experienced an unprecedented rise in imprisonment over the last thirty years; approximately 2.2 million people now reside in U.S. prisons and jails. The growth of imprisonment in Florida typifies this trend: since 1974, Florida's state legislators have appropriated money to build over 55 major correctional institutions and an additional 56 work camps and work release centers in order to accommodate an inmate population that grew an average of 20% per year. Florida now imprisons approximately 85,000 people, a prison population exceeded by only Texas, California, and the federal prison system. Using Florida as a case study, this research project compares three periods of legislative decisions around the prison system: the pre-prison boom (1955-1972), the initial prison boom (1973-1987), and the late prison boom (1988-2005). The project combines archival research, interviews and secondary data to answer how state legislators made choices about crime control; what factors they considered when making decisions that could expand the prison system; what social, political and economic conditions underpinned their decisions; and finally, if and how these factors and conditions changed over the course of the last fifty years. This unique state-level research design promises to generate findings that challenge and develop current theories on the relationship between politics and punishment in the United States. In doing so, the findings will paint a more comprehensive and complex picture of state policymakers' role in prison growth as they are neither solely victims of a vengeance-hungry public, nor self-serving architects of the new penal state. The research also promises to have a broader, practical impact, as it comes at a critical point in time when resources for prisons are competing with resources for other spending priorities, including domestic security. How legislators decide what to fund will be very important to citizens and communities, especially to those African-American communities most adversely impacted by the rise in imprisonment. Consequently, the research findings will be disseminated to academics, policymakers and community groups who can use the knowledge to help legislators create more effective, and less detrimental, means of crime prevention and control.