Prison System

A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are imprisoned under the authority of the state, usually as punishment for various crimes.

In her book Are Prisons Obsolete? (2004), Davis argued that prisons are part of a racist criminal justice system, and she showed how the prison-industrial complex was shaped by slavery and its aftermath.

Goldman was a passionate critic of the prison system, critiquing both the treatment of prisoners and the social causes of crime.

As Wacquant would have it, the prison should be viewed as a "judicial ghetto" and the ghetto-especially the post-Fordist class-segregated 'hyperghetto', as a species of "ethnoracial prison".

With typical rhetorical flair, Foucault asked, "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?

Originally, Western's research pertained to organized labor, but he became interested in researching prisons and mass incarceration, in his words, "almost by accident" after talking to a colleague about the United States' use of prisons to manage disadvantaged populations.