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... prison system.sIn Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault asserts that “prisons‘reform’ is virtually contemporary with the prison itself: it constitutes, as it were, itssprogramme” (=-=Foucault 1995-=- [1977], 234). Discipline and Punish delineates the shift fromscorporal punishment to the penitentiary as the predominant punishment for crime, thesreform that inaugurated the modern U.S. prison syste...

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...ing can best be advanced by liberating individualsentrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized bysstrong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (=-=Harvey 2005-=-, 2). Althoughsneoliberal rhetoric calls for “freedom” from state intervention, the neoliberal state takessan active role in creating new markets, sustaining apparatuses like the military, police,sand...

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...ntry into this discussion.s77sso upset Black family structures that matriarchies had replaced more traditionalspatriarchal formations, and these matriarchal arrangements were impeding Blacksprogress (=-=Moynihan 1965-=-). This racist, sexist narrative vilifying Black motherhood hassreappeared time and again in discourses of welfare reform. The caricature of the Blacks“welfare queen” carries easily-accessed political...

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... history and contemporary prisonshorrors. The practice of involuntary sterilization of Black, Puerto Rican, Native, disabled,sand poor women draws a long, violent trajectory through U.S. history (see =-=Roberts 1997-=-;sSmith 2005). California has a particularly brutal tradition of forced sterilization. It issestimated that 20,000 sterilizations—one-third of the approximate 60,000 performed insthe United States bet...

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...ison population (within the U.S. and transnationally) and that policing andsimprisonment must be understood as primary vectors of (state) violence against womens(Sudbury 2005; Davis and Shaylor 2001; =-=Richie 1996-=-). A 2001 joint statement fromsINCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and Critical Resistance calls for a moresnuanced understanding of the intersections of gender, sexuality, and the prison industri...

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... to idealize the New Deal welfare state, which distributedsand withheld benefits according to racialized divisions of labor and consolidated whitesprivilege through Social Security and the G.I. Bill (=-=Katznelson 2005-=-). However, they dosnot hesitate to condemn the harms associated with the police state, which aressignificantly worse than the insufficiencies of the welfare state. The carceral state hassmaintained t...

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...labor had made unprecedented gains insbargaining power that threatened the owning class, and the revolutionary upheavals ofsthe 1960s were significant cause for alarm for the political establishment (=-=Parenti 1999-=-).sTo manage the dual threats of the economic crisis of “stagflation” and the menace ofspolitical power of labor and Black liberation struggles, Nixon began to slowly turn thescountry on a trajectory ...

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...sive failure, evidenced by the disproportionate incarceration of Black andsLatino men, the destructive effects of the war on drugs, and the rampant criminalizationsof the poor (see Mauer 2006 [1999]; =-=Reiman 2006-=- [1979]). However, this perspective hassbeen criticized for failing to sufficiently account for the forces, interests, and historicalsroots that serve to contextualize the prison boom. It is from this...

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...ontemporary prisonshorrors. The practice of involuntary sterilization of Black, Puerto Rican, Native, disabled,sand poor women draws a long, violent trajectory through U.S. history (see Roberts 1997;s=-=Smith 2005-=-). California has a particularly brutal tradition of forced sterilization. It issestimated that 20,000 sterilizations—one-third of the approximate 60,000 performed insthe United States between 1909 an...

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...sponsive facilities, Zundre Johnson insisted onsreframing the question to look elsewhere: “What good will it do if they don't get to thescore of the problem?... They gotta nip this in the community” (=-=Johnson 2009-=-). ShawnsGoode echoed this sentiment. Proposing new gender responsive facilities, Goodesargued, was a distraction from the real resources women need: “If you’re trying to help,slook at education. Help...

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...veled against the Gender Responsive StrategiessCommission was that Commission members never asked what they needed. As HakimsAnderson pointedly asked, “How is building new prisons meeting my needs?”s(=-=Anderson 2009-=-). In my interviews some needs emerged clearly: the need for meaningfulseducation, consensual and reliable health care, free access to family and loved ones.sThere are undoubtedly many, many more. As ...

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...third of the approximate 60,000 performed insthe United States between 1909 and 1960—took place in California, many of them onswomen institutionalized in prisons, mental hospitals, and reformatories (=-=Stern 2005-=-, 8384). California’s eugenic sterilization practices were used as a model for the 1933 NazisGermany sterilization law (Kline 2001). In 2003 Governor Gray Davis issued a publicsapology to those who ha...

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...en institutionalized in prisons, mental hospitals, and reformatories (Stern 2005, 8384). California’s eugenic sterilization practices were used as a model for the 1933 NazisGermany sterilization law (=-=Kline 2001-=-). In 2003 Governor Gray Davis issued a publicsapology to those who had been involuntarily sterilized (Feist 2003). However, thesGender Responsive Strategies Commission’s mention of sterilization indi...

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...fully free themselves from it again. The State’ssrecidivism rate—that is, the percentage of people leaving prison who return to prison orsjail within three years—is the highest in the nation, at 70% (=-=Fischer 2005-=-). California’ssprioritization of its prison system has been consistently evident in the state’s budget.sIncreases in prison spending have regularly outpaced increases in spending for K-12 andshigher ...

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...grams that people can attend as an alternative tosincarceration? These programs are sorely needed and incredibly scarce, particularly insSouthern California where so many female prisoners come from” (=-=Henry 2009-=-). A Junes2006 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed by Ari Wohlfeiler and Cassandra Shaylor similarlysbrings improved social services into the debate over gender responsiveness:sWhat about shifting money out...

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... Control in the United States,” Rebecca Bohrman and Naomi Murakawa arguesthat “big government is still alive, ‘reinvented’ in the form of expensive andsinterventionist immigration and crime control” (=-=Bohrman and Murakawa 2005-=-, 109).sThey point to the “unifying logic behind both social welfare divestment and border patrolsand penal system investment” (115, emphasis in original). By drawing attention to thesshifting priorit...

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... control… And itswould be nice to have one group who’s outside of that, so that if something starts goingsreally wrong with it… we would be positioned outside of it so that we could actuallysobject” (=-=Chandler 2009-=-). Predictably, the Commission would eventually take exactly theskind of turn that critics like Chandler had feared. Although Justice Now and othersorganizations not seated on the Commission did not g...

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...ustrial complex.” Urban theorist Mike Davis is mostsfrequently credited with having coined the phrase “prison industrial complex” in a 1995sarticle for The Nation about California’s prison system (M. =-=Davis 1995-=-).3 Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans offer a foundational articulation of one of thesmost commonly used definitions of the prison industrial complex: a convergence ofsDavis’s “HellsFactories in the Field”...

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...slevel of representative power.sInstead of Prisons argues that “we need to consciouslysabandon the jargon that camouflages the reality of caging and develop honest languagesas we build our movement” (=-=Knopp and Regier 2005-=- [1976], 10). There is no neutrals13slanguage for talking about practices and systems of imprisonment: therefore, I willsexplain some of the language choices I have made in this thesis.sMy project foc...

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...es do not have a hold on their lives, the long reach of thesprison industrial complex is always threatening a future behind bars. In other words, fors4 For more information on conditions, see Amnesty =-=International 1999-=-, Sylvia Rivera LawsProject 2007, and Human Rights Watch 2003. For information specific to California women’ssprisons, see Justice Now 2009 and Legal Services for Prisoners with Children 2005.s10smemb...

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...he intention of the Commission members, who continued to push thesplan for new gender responsive beds. Goode said, “our input should have had an impactsand eliminated the extra housing facilit[ies]” (=-=Goode 2009-=-). Instead, these sessionssbecame not only a screen to shield the Gender Responsive Strategies Commission fromsaccusations that they were out of touch with prison conditions, but also a means to claim...

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...ding have regularly outpaced increases in spending for K-12 andshigher education, and the CDCR’s budget has been spared while other departments facesmajor cuts (see California State Budget 2007-2008, =-=Harris 2007-=-). The result is a well8 The “Three Strikes” Law was passed by California voters as Proposition 184 in 1994. The lawsis intended to amplify punishments for “repeat offenders.” Once a person has been c...

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...turn tosthe Chowchilla megaprisons after experiencing terrible health care and terrible management atsLive Oak, the gender responsive facility that is currently in operation (Levi 2009; Bandrup 2009;s=-=Horton 2009-=-). However, for the sake of this section, I am discussing the ideals of gendersresponsive facilities as “better” and more humane than the megaprisons, which was how theyswere portrayed, even though th...

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...ent was common among thosesJustice Now interviewed: “they sit in Sacramento and make all these laws, and not one ofsthem comes in here and interviews us about our plight and what's going on in here”s(=-=Bandrup 2009-=-). Misty Rojo’s statement of opposition echoed this point: “Much of thesreasoning used by academics and legislators to advocate for the additional 4,500swomen’s beds has referenced the ‘needs’ of wome...

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...are sorely lacking: “not places like Beverly Hills, places likesmy neighborhood [in Los Angeles]”—or, in this case, Fresno. Concepción went on, “Sosif I want treatment I have to become incarcerated” (=-=Concepción 2009-=-). That is, insteadsof building up service provision in the areas that send the largest numbers of people tos59sprison, gender responsiveness would simply bring the prisons closer to home by callingst...

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... prisons …has tosconsider not merely the boundary between the imprisoned and the free but also the onesbetween those whose lives include the prisons in their horizon and those whose lives dosnot” (Da =-=Cunha 2005-=-, 163).sFor many people in the United States, prisons are daily,sintimate realities. This immediacy is a constant for people who are locked up, those whoslabor in and around the prison system, people ...

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...rilization practices were used as a model for the 1933 NazisGermany sterilization law (Kline 2001). In 2003 Governor Gray Davis issued a publicsapology to those who had been involuntarily sterilized (=-=Feist 2003-=-). However, thesGender Responsive Strategies Commission’s mention of sterilization indicates thatsinstitutionalized women in California continue to be at risk losing their reproductivescapacities agai...

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...ng of “blacksbodies for whom white supremacist cultures and state policing practices in the UnitedsStates have preserved an exceptional place: that of targets for excessive force and thespenal site” (=-=James 2007-=-, 6). Indeed, this understanding of the prison industrial complexsas a technique and a technology developed through and for anti-Black racism also marks thesshortcomings of reformist angles. If impris...

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...s4 For more information on conditions, see Amnesty International 1999, Sylvia Rivera LawsProject 2007, and Human Rights Watch 2003. For information specific to California women’ssprisons, see Justice =-=Now 2009-=- and Legal Services for Prisoners with Children 2005.s10smembers of certain groups—Black and Brown people, immigrants, transgender people,spoor people, people with disabilities, sex workers—the possib...

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...out women who chose to return tosthe Chowchilla megaprisons after experiencing terrible health care and terrible management atsLive Oak, the gender responsive facility that is currently in operation (=-=Levi 2009-=-; Bandrup 2009;sHorton 2009). However, for the sake of this section, I am discussing the ideals of gendersresponsive facilities as “better” and more humane than the megaprisons, which was how theyswer...

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...ndustrialscomplex as a “moving target” that is both vulnerable to political pressure and also highlyscapable of shifting and adapting to accommodate changing interests and fluctuatingspublic opinion (=-=Petteruti and Walsh 2008-=-). Gender responsiveness is a clear example ofsthis trend: it emerged onto the changing landscape of California prison policy andsachieved popular support that could not be garnered for other prison e...

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...hat we thinkswe can win. Why should I not want to be completely liberated and have my peoples140saround me and feel healthy and be able to engage with people, to be able to hold peoplesaccountable?” (=-=Samuels and Stein 2008-=-, 11). I have taken this recommendation seriouslyswhile also outlining concrete short- and medium-term implications of abolitionist politicssin order to ground the “wild dreaming” of abolition in a sp...

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...arked for construction andsoperation of new prisons. That way, former prisoners can reunite withstheir families and seek education, job training, housing, employment andsdrug treatment as necessary. (=-=Shaylor and Wohlfeiler 2006-=-)sBeyond arguing for reallocating funds away from the CDCR, the op-ed piece alsosemphasizes the danger in positioning “services” within corrections, arguing that “makingsprison the place where the sta...

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...the long reach of thesprison industrial complex is always threatening a future behind bars. In other words, fors4 For more information on conditions, see Amnesty International 1999, Sylvia Rivera Laws=-=Project 2007-=-, and Human Rights Watch 2003. For information specific to California women’ssprisons, see Justice Now 2009 and Legal Services for Prisoners with Children 2005.s10smembers of certain groups—Black and ...