The Prison of Democracy : Race, Leavenworth, and the Culture of Law / Sara M. Benson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benson, Sara M., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas--History.

United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (209)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oakland University of California Press 2019

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2019]

Language Note:

English.

Summary:

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Built in the 1890s at the center of the nation, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary was designed specifically to be a replica of the US Capitol Building. But why? The Prison of Democracy explains the political significance of a prison built to mimic one of America's monuments to democracy. Locating Leavenworth in memory, history, and law, the prison geographically sits at the borders of Indian Territory (1825-1854) and Bleeding Kansas (1854-1864), both sites of contestation over slavery and freedom. Author Sara M. Benson argues that Leavenworth reshaped the design of punishment in America by gradually normalizing state-inflicted violence against citizens. Leavenworth's peculiar architecture illustrates the real roots of mass incarceration-as an explicitly race- and nation-building system that has been ingrained in the very fabric of US history rather than as part of a recent post-war racial history. The book sheds light on the truth of the painful relationship between the carceral state and democracy in the US-a relationship that thrives to this day.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction: The Idea of Leavenworth and the Prison of Democracy

1. The Architecture of Liberalism and the Origins of Carceral Democracy

2. Territorial Politics: Mass Incarceration and the Punitive Legacies of the Indian Territory

3. Federal Punishment and the Legal Time of Bleeding Kansas

4. Federal Punishment and the Legal Time of Bleeding Kansas

5. Leavenworth's Political Prisoners: Race, Resistance, and the Prison's Archive

Postscript: "Walls Turned Sideways Are Bridges": Abolition Dreams and the Prison's Aftermath

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780520296961

0520296966

OCLC:

1084630451

Access Restriction:

Unrestricted online access.