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Golden Gulag is Ruth Wilson Gilmore's study of why California built the largest prison system in the world, tracing the boom to surpluses of finance capital, labor, land and state capacity rather than to rising crime. It moves between statewide, rural and urban scales, and argues that weakened labor and defeated radical struggles set the conditions for prison growth. The book is a foundational text of prison abolition scholarship and suits readers in criminology, geography, law and social movements. Its mix of political economy and on-the-ground detail sets it apart from narrower legal or policy accounts of mass incarceration.
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Reviewers and scholars treat Golden Gulag as a landmark account of mass incarceration, widely cited for its explanation of the California prison boom and its influence on abolitionist organizing. Many praise its research and argument; some general readers find the academic style demanding.
prisons has increased more than 450%, even as the crime rate has fallen steadily for decades. Ruth Wilson Gilmore offers the first detailed explanation for the buildup.
The book looks at how political and economic forces, from global to local, combined to produce the prison boom. It examines the issue from statewide, rural, and urban perspectives. Gilmore traces the expansion to surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity.
She details the crises that hit California's economy with particular severity. She argues that defeats of radical struggles, the weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment were key conditions for prison growth. The book also covers the results: a vast and expensive prison system, a large number of incarcerated young people of color, and punitive measures such as the "three strikes" law. It challenges common assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state's commitment to prison expansion.
