Review of "Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America" by Brett Story (University of Minnesota Press)

• Main Author: Marcia Klotz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cultural Studies Association 2020-04-01
• Series: Lateral
• Subjects: prison studies; abolition; neoliberalism; urban geography; prisons
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.25158/L9.1.15

Brett Story’s <i>Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America</i> offers a timely reflection on the role of mass incarceration in remaking the neoliberal contours of contemporary U.S. culture. Working within the traditions of critical prison studies and structural critiques of neoliberalism, Story offers detailed portraits of a number of landscapes shaped by the logic of mass incarceration. She persuasively argues that the work of prison abolitionism must also encompass the deeper structural projects of abolishing racism and other injustices in society at large. This book is best read alongside the documentary, <i>The Prison in Twelve Landscapes</i> (2016), by the same author.