Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation

by John M. Eason

For the past fifty years, America has been extraordinarily busy building prisons. Since 1970 we have tripled the total number of facilities, adding more than 1,200 new prisons to the landscape. This building boom has taken place across the country but is largely concentrated in rural southern towns.

In 2007, John M. Eason moved his family to Forrest City, Arkansas, in search of answers to key questions about this Why is America building so many prisons? Why now? And why in rural areas? Eason quickly learned that rural demand for prisons is complicated. Towns like Forrest City choose to build prisons not simply in hopes of landing jobs or economic wellbeing, but also to protect and improve their reputations. For some rural leaders, fostering a prison in their town is a means of achieving order in a rapidly changing world. Taking us into the decision-making meetings and tracking the impact of prisons on economic development, poverty, and race, Eason demonstrates how groups of elite whites and black leaders share power. Situating prisons within dynamic shifts that rural economies are undergoing and showing how racially diverse communities lobby for prison construction, Big House on the Prairie is a remarkable glimpse into the ways a prison economy takes shape and operates.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, Academic, Sociology

240 pages, Paperback

Published March 6, 2017

Reviews

[Nadine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ethnography of prison building in a poor, rural, and racially-segregated community, Big House on the Prairie is a must read for students of criminology, sociology, political science, economics, and public administration. Interweaving ideas from all of these fields, Eason is able to paint a picture that tells a very different story from the traditional prison narrative; this is especially important in light of the analysis of economics in a small town community and the opposite side of the prison abolition movement: jobs. Eason does a very good job of presenting the tensions that the intersection of job creation for poor rural minorities and exploitation and imprisonment of urban Blacks and Latinos present. He offers an alternative view of why and how prisons get built and this story is integral to understanding mass incarceration in the United States today. A must read for anyone who cares about how our society deals with incarceration. Definitely a good book for a generally interested public and would make a strong addition to any advanced undergrad or graduate curriculum in any of the fields previously outlined. Especially important for those who aspire to be city managers, mayors, or other municipal leaders, as well as criminologists and sociologists of all stripes.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly, prison placement into rural communities is a complicated and fraught experience - boosting up and wearing down the surrounding towns. The most important parts of this book deal with the contours of the rural ghetto and how minority race-leaders complicate and oversell the hope for uplift the prison will bring to locals, while balancing the reality that prisons are, inherently, racial terror centers. Eason inserts himself into his research in strange ways, choosing to move to Forest City was not an odd choice, but relying upon his first hand experience to build out the conclusions of his research can read as anecdotal and less scholarly. But that is a disservice to the amount of research and interviewing and due diligence he has maintained to craft his findings. thankfully, he is a great and engaging writer, which may account for some of his personal narrative's inclusion.

Black poverty increases due to white flight, lowering school revenues and rankings, and the decline of city prestige/image. Prison employees live outside the city where the prison is located, so jobs do not result in increased local business revenue, housing prices, or infrastructure. Coupled with the prisoner release stats that most released inmates remain in the prison town and do not leave the area without the social or economic support systems to reacclimate them to jobs, safe housing, or mental/drug treatment therefore recidivism increases drug use, crime, poverty, and prestige.

In the south, the rural ghetto stratifies along racial lines, thereby extending Jim Crow Era proscriptions and limitations on black mobility and political agency. Social stigma follows as poor whites and black middle class move out of poor black areas, those neighborhoods become short hand for crime, antisocial behavior, and uneducated - "take that attitude back to the South Side" - allows for a psychological distancing and "otherness" to take hold of communities and neighborhoods extending the systems of racist oppression.

In this environment, then, building a prison not only seems logical, but appealing. A possible solution to loss of industry and population. The prison represents jobs and money flowing into local business. Though the prison rarely meets or fulfills the political, economic, and social solutions that city governments and leaders promise.

[Jack Maxwell]

Nice book

[Aydan · Rating 2 out of 5]

the longer I think about it the more it ruffles my feathers tbh,,,,

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book in that the author covers prison siting from the point of view of the rural communities that seek them. His methodology is rigorous, well-detailed and he fully immersed himself in the (adjacent) community to study this issue.

I am glad I chose this as a book for one of our program courses; students will get quite a bit out of it.

P.S. Again, should have been called "Big house on the Delta"