Despite the substantial interest in mass imprisonment, limited research has studied how mass incarceration has occurred across the 3000 city and county jails in the United States. Using Bureau of Justice Statistics surveys and censuses of US jails, we investigate patterns of jail construction over the last 50 years and ask whether these infrastructural changes represent expanding carceral capacity or simply capacity restructuring, whereby jails were consolidated and renovated rather than multiplied. Despite consistent numbers of jails over time, jail populations have increased substantially, suggesting that mass incarceration has functioned differently in jails than in prisons. We posit a theory of “jailization,” whereby jails have permeated the membranes of different arms of the criminal legal system to serve as a catchment center or “lobby,” and argue for dedicated studies of jails’ unique and flexible roles. This contributes to the literature on penal change by showing that changes to jails during the era of mass incarceration look markedly different than that of prisons, underscoring the importance of studying them as unique criminal legal institutions.
AdlerJLChenW (2023) Jail conditions and mortality: Death rates associated with turnover, jail size, and population characteristics: Study examines jail conditions and associations with death rates. Health Affairs42(6): 849–857.
2.
BardesJ (2024) The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803–1930. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
3.
CarsonEA (2021) Prisoners in 2020 – Statistical Tables. NCJ 302776. Bureau of Justice Statistics: US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.
EasonJM (2010) Mapping prison proliferation: Region, rurality, race and disadvantage in prison placement. Social Science Research39(6): 1015–1028.
6.
EasonJM (2016a) Big House on the Prairie. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
7.
EasonJM (2016b) Reclaiming the prison boom: Considering prison proliferation in the era of mass imprisonment. Sociology Compass10(4): 261–271.
8.
EasonJM (2017) Prisons as panacea or pariah? The countervailing consequences of the prison boom on the political economy of rural towns. Social Sciences6(1): 7.
9.
FridayG (2024) Time as a Weapon: Women, Temporal Experience, and Resistance in a Central New York Jail. Symbolic Interaction: symb.1220.
GlasmeierAKFarriganT (2007) The economic impacts of the prison development boom on persistently poor rural places. International Regional Science Review30(3): 274–299.
12.
GoodmanA (2020) The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
13.
HarrisJSimsKMEasonJM, et al. (2023) The Prison Bust: Declining carceral capacity in an era of mass incarceration. Punishment & Society14624745231214426: 345–367.
14.
HartmanS (2006) Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. London: MacMillan Publishers.
15.
HeatonPMaysonSStevensonM (2017) The downstream consequences of misdemeanor pretrial detention. Stanford Law Review69: 711.
16.
HeissJHindsOSchattner-ElmalehE, et al. (2020) The Scale of the COVID-19-Related Jail Population Decline. Vera Evidence Brief. Vera Institute of Justice.
17.
HowellJ (2008) Superpredators and Other Myths About Juvenile Delinquency. In: Preventing and Reducing Juvenile Delinquency: A Comprehensive Framework. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, California 91320 United States: SAGE Publications, Inc. Available at: https://sk.sagepub.com/books/preventing-and-reducing-juvenile-delinquency-2e (accessed 26 July 2024).
18.
HughesTWilsonDJ (2003) Reentry Trends in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.
KinnerSAYoungJTSnowK, et al. (2020) Prisons and custodial settings are part of a comprehensive response to COVID-19. The Lancet Public Health5(4): e188–e189.
LittmanA (2021) Jails, sheriffs, and carceral policymaking. Vanderbilt Law Review74: 861.
30.
LuckenK (2011) Leaving mass incarceration: The ways and means of penal change. Criminology & Public Policy10: 707–714.
31.
LynchM (2010) Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
32.
MaiCBelainehMSubramanianR, et al. (2019) Broken Ground: Why America Keeps Building More Jails and What It Can Do Instead. Brooklyn: Vera Institute of Justice.
33.
MassogliaMPridemoreWA (2015) Incarceration and health. Annual Review of Sociology41(1): 291–310.
34.
McConvilleS (1998) Local Justice: The Jail. In: NorvalMRothmanDJ (eds) The Oxford History of the Prison. New York: Oxford University Press: 226–294.
35.
MillerRJ (2014) Devolving the carceral state: Race, prisoner reentry, and the micro-politics of urban poverty management. Punishment & Society16(3): 305–335.
36.
MitchelsonML (2013) Up the River (from Home): Where Does the Prisoner ‘Count’ on Census Day? In: Carceral Spaces: Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention. London: Routledge.
37.
MooneyJShanahanJ (2020) Rikers Island Jail complex: The use of social history to inform current debates on incarceration in New York City. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice59(3): 286–304.
38.
NewportM (2022) This Is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration. Politics and Culture in Modern America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
39.
NofilB (2024) The Migrant’s Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
O’Brassill-KulfanK (2019) “Severe punishment for their misfortunes and poverty”: Philadelphia’s Arch Street Prison, 1804–37. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography143(3): 247–269.
42.
OuelletteHMHuebnerBMGiuffreA, et al. (2024) The role of race, gender, and poverty on length of pretrial jail stays: A multi-site analysis. Criminology & Public Policy1745-9133: 12678.
43.
PotterRHLinHMazeA, et al. (2012) Jails and public health service delivery and empirical knowledge: The impact of jail population “flow”. American Journal of Criminal Justice37(2): 200–208.
44.
PriceJM (2015) Prison and Social Death. Critical Issues in Crime and Society. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
45.
ReavesBA (2013) Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 2009 – Statistical Tables. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.
46.
RodríguezD (2020) White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide. New York: Fordham University Press.
47.
RubinAPhelpsMS (2017) Fracturing the penal state: State actors and the role of conflict in penal change. Theoretical Criminology21(4): 422–440.
48.
RubinAT (2019) Punishment’s legal templates: A theory of formal penal change. Law & Society Review53(2): 518–553.
SchenwarMLawV (2021) Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms. New York: The New Press.
51.
ScheptJ (2015) Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion. New York City: NYU Press.
52.
ScheptJPelot-HobbsLNortonJ (2024) The Jail Is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration. Brooklyn: Verso Books.
53.
ShanahanJ (2022) Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage. Brooklyn: Verso Books.
54.
ShanahanJKurtiZ (2025) Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
55.
ShanahanJMooneyJ (2019) New York City’s captive work force: Remembering the prisoners who built Rikers Island. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice56: 13–26.
56.
ShannonSUggenC (2012) Incarceration as a political institution. In: AmentaENashKScottA (eds) The Wiley-Blackwell companion to political sociology. 1st ed. Wiley, 214–225. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444355093.ch19 (accessed 9 July 2024).
57.
SimsKMFoltzJSkidmoreME (2021) Prisons and COVID-19 spread in the United States. American Journal of Public Health111(8): 1534–1541.
58.
SmithPZ (1993) Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 1990. U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.
SubramanianRDelaneyRRobertsS, et al. (2015) Incarceration’s front door: The Misuse of Jails in America. Brooklyn: Vera Institute of Justice.
61.
SubramanianRHenrichsonCKang-BrownJ (2015) In Our Own Backyard: Confronting Growth and Disparities in American Jails. Brooklyn: Vera Institute of Justice.
62.
Van CleveNG (2020) Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
63.
WacquatL (2002) From slavery to mass incarceration: Rethinking the race question in the U.S. The New Left Review13: 41–60.
64.
WakefieldSUggenC (2010) Incarceration and stratification. Annual Review of Sociology36(1): 387–406.
65.
WakefieldSWildemanC (2014) Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.
66.
WalkerML (2022) Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail. New York: Oxford University Press.
67.
WalshJP (2013) The Culture of Urban Control Jail Overcrowding in the Crime Control Era. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
68.
WaltonSLobaoLDubeM (2025) Jail incarceration across the U.S.: The role of the local state and place-based punishment vulnerability. Punishment & Society.
ZengZ (2023) Jail Inmates in 2022 – Statistical Tables. Statistical Tables. U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics. Available at: https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/ji22st.pdf.
