Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia

by Judah Schept

How prisons became economic development strategies for rural Appalachian communities

As the United States began the project of mass incarceration, rural communities turned to building prisons as a strategy for economic development. More than 350 prisons have been built in the U.S. since 1980, with certain regions of the country accounting for large shares of this dramatic growth. Central Appalachia is one such region; there are eight prisons alone in Eastern Kentucky. If Kentucky were its own country, it would have the seventh highest incarceration rate in the world. In Coal, Cages, Crisis, Judah Schept takes a closer look at this stunning phenomenon, providing insight into prison growth, jail expansion and rising incarceration rates in America’s hinterlands.

Drawing on interviews, site visits, and archival research, Schept traces recent prison growth in the region to the rapid decline of its coal industry. He takes us inside this startling transformation occurring in the coalfields, where prisons are often built on top of old coalmines, including mountaintop removal sites, and built into community planning approaches to crises of unemployment, population loss, and declining revenues. By linking prison growth to other sites in this landscape—coal mines, coal waste, landfills, and incinerators—Schept shows that the prison boom has less to do with crime and punishment and much more with the overall extraction, depletion, and waste disposal processes that characterize dominant development strategies for the region.

Schept argues that the future of this area now hangs in the balance, detailing recent efforts to oppose its carceral growth. Coal, Cages, Crisis offers invaluable insight into the complex dynamics of mass incarceration that continue to shape Appalachia and the broader United States.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction, History

336 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2022

About the author

Judah Schept, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. He holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Indiana University and a BA in Sociology from Vassar College. Judah’s work examines the political economy, historical geography, and cultural politics of the prison industrial complex. He is the author of Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Politics of Carceral Expansion (New York University Press, 2015). In addition, Judah’s writing can be found in journals such as Radical Criminology, Theoretical Criminology, Punishment and Society, Social Justice, and Crime, Media, Culture, as well as in blogs and opinion pieces for academic and activist websites. Judah’s current research examines the historical, spatial and political relationships between extractive and prison economies in Central Appalachia.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Avowed Anti-Capitalist Screed Still Highlights All Too Real Issues. And these issues absolutely need to be more openly discussed. If you dismiss the blinders to anything other than the set premise and worldview the author comes to this research with and look at the points he raises instead, this is a solid examination of at least some of the ways the central Appalachia region of (primarily) Kentucky / (some) West Virginia / (some) Virginia has transformed from being driven by a coal economy to now being driven by a prison economy - largely on much of the exact same land. With a bibliography clocking in at 38% of the ARC I read *even with* the author conducting much of the research and interviews himself, the scholarship within his worldview is largely beyond contestation. This truly is one of the most well documented ARCs I've come across in nearly 800 books (across all genres, fiction and nonfiction). Ultimately the star deduction here was because the author never leaves his particular biases to even make strawmen of opposing views, much less actually examine whether they may explain the issues at hand better than his own views do. Still, for what it is, this truly is a remarkable text that covers a particular topic that few others do. Very much recommended.

[Austin Luz · Rating 4 out of 5]

ideologically, intellectually, and methodologically a 5/5, organizationally a 3/5. real interesting and compelling abolitionist theorizing going on here but did at times feel a little all over the place (understandably so- there is a lot to unpack about this relationship in this particular region).

overall thrilled to see Appalachia portrayed by scholars in a way that understands the long context of resistance and worker’s movements. and real useful to document the opposition’s tactics- lots to learn for the rest of us 🖤

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Golden Gulag for Appalachia” is an effective, if reductive, pitch for this. Very strong overall, with the highlight being the parts where Schepts uses social reproduction theory to articulate the precise function of prisons under capitalism (not creating jobs and/or boosting economic development, neither of which prisons actually do for the localities in which they’re built, but sustaining the social relations which undergird capitalist production in general), particularly this passage that I wish he expanded on bc I think it’s the most interesting line of thought in the book:

“It is not just that the prison may provide some jobs, but rather that it threatens to deputize hundreds of people into one of the central institutional sites of racialized class war. While the prison attempts to replace the coal mine spatially, psychically, and economically in the community, it also functions to fuse the police powers in operation in the twentieth-century coal camps and company towns into the new form of work. That is, miner on the one hand and mine guard/sheriff/state police officer on the other, at bloody odds with each other periodically during the twentieth century, might be best un- derstood now in some areas of the coalfields as a single individual: the prison guard.”

[Katie Dunleavy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Important book about the arguably most overlooked region of the U.S. Helps people understand the ways in which cutesy "Friends of Coal" bracelets aren't helping coal miners, and how we are starting the cycle again with prisons. I wish the original intent of the visual representation from the photographer-partner came through more. Also, I think I would have struggled more with the content if I hadn't already read "What You're Getting Wrong about Appalachia" and "The New Jim Crow."

[Allison Widder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prisons are profit and this is a great journey through how that manifests in a community