Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State

“Sunbelt Capitalism is a revelation. It is a masterful and compelling account of the interplay of racial, economic, and political factors that rendered the US South a pioneer of mass incarceration as liberal modernizers sought to shed the region's Jim Crow past by embarking on a brutal and unprecedented prison boom.” -- Marie Gottschalk | author of ""Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics"" “In this brilliant, carefully crafted book, Taylor traces the roots of our contemporary mass incarceration regime to an unlikely source: the emergence of capitalist development in the Sunbelt during the height of the Cold War. Taylor reveals how a cast of political actors and forces shaped the development of the racialized carceral state, from pro-growth boosters to ‘color-blind’ moderates. An indispensable analysis for understanding and contesting the modern prison state.” -- Daniel Martinez HoSang | Yale University “Taylor has masterfully captured the history of crisis and change that ended Jim Crow and birthed a new regime of racialized violence. Motivated to create hospitable investment conditions in this transitional moment, southern politicians declared a new model of law and order and remade their states through expanded criminalization, police professionalization, and new prisons. Sunbelt Capitalism is a crucial contribution to the history of the southern carceral state and an urgent admonition about the expansive and legitimating potential of reform.” -- Judah Schept | author of ""Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia""