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dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11401/77725
dc.description.sponsorshipThis work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.en_US
dc.formatMonograph
dc.format.mediumElectronic Resourceen_US
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherThe Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
dc.typeDissertation
dcterms.abstractMy dissertation explores the social experience and environmental politics of mass incarceration in five communities in New York's Adirondack Park, with a focus on the period 1975-1999. Historians, sociologists, and criminologists have enhanced our understanding of criminal law and its impacts on lawbreakers, their families, and communities. By the same token, environmental historians have expanded our knowledge of the dynamic forces that contributed to the making of parks and recreational spaces across the United States. With rare exceptions, scholars in these fields have left unexplored one of the consequences of postindustrial decline, namely, the mass incarceration of predominantly urban, non-white men in penal institutions situated in overwhelmingly white, rural communities far from their homes. This project, therefore, seeks to begin a conversation about the many people, environments, and economies that have been implicated in the United States' criminal justice system. I argue that city dwellers' desire for " law and order," and Park residents' clamor for economic development, outweighed the failures of mass incarceration, leading to construction of a crimescape in the Adirondacks in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Anti-prison rancor in affluent parts of New York pushed correctional planners to the North Country, where they encountered communities whose permanent residents, seasonal dwellers, history, and natural environment greatly complicated the state's carceral objectives. While many locals welcomed the prospect of increased economic activity, second homeowners and other outsiders bristled at the idea of their vacationland becoming a gulag. Environmental regulators found themselves in the crosshairs of locals suspicious of state power, elite vacationers demanding a halt to penal expansion in the Park, and prison officials eager to fill more cells. In the end, corrections leaders hashed out compromises with environmental bureaucrats that mollified supporters and opponents and paved the way for nearly a dozen new prisons. While escapes, violence, and unrest were ever-present in the area's prison towns, the free labor of inmate workers in communities across the region helped facilitate the slow naturalization of the Adirondacks' crimescape.
dcterms.available2017-09-20T16:53:26Z
dcterms.contributorTomes, Nancyen_US
dcterms.contributorSellers, Christopher Cen_US
dcterms.contributorRilling, Donnaen_US
dcterms.contributorChase, Roberten_US
dcterms.contributorChiang, Connie.en_US
dcterms.creatorHall, Clarence Jefferson
dcterms.dateAccepted2017-09-20T16:53:26Z
dcterms.dateSubmitted2017-09-20T16:53:26Z
dcterms.descriptionDepartment of History.en_US
dcterms.extent316 pg.en_US
dcterms.formatApplication/PDFen_US
dcterms.formatMonograph
dcterms.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/11401/77725
dcterms.issued2015-08-01
dcterms.languageen_US
dcterms.provenanceMade available in DSpace on 2017-09-20T16:53:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Hall_grad.sunysb_0771E_11852.pdf: 24581391 bytes, checksum: c650d9659bde873434ccf6791e964beb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014en
dcterms.publisherThe Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
dcterms.subjectEconomy, Environment, Health, Incarceration, Parks, Prisons
dcterms.subjectAmerican history
dcterms.titlePrisonland: Environment, Society, and Mass Incarceration on New York's Northern Frontier, 1845-1999
dcterms.typeDissertation


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