The Jail is Everywhere

Nearly every county and major city in the United States has a jail, which serves as a short-term detention centre controlled by local sheriffs that directs people into prisons and long-term incarceration. While the growing movement against incarceration and policing has called to reform or abolish prisons, jails have often gone unnoticed or, in some cases, been seen as a "better" alternative to prisons. Yet in recent decades, jails have been the fastest-growing sector of the US carceral state.

Jails are widely used for immigrant detention by ICE and the U.S. Marshals and as a place to offload individuals that prisons can't hold. As jails expand, they transform the surrounding region, with entire towns and small cities seeing healthcare, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, and employment opportunities dominated by carceral concerns.

If jails are everywhere, resistance to jails is too. The recent jail boom has sparked numerous local activist struggles to resist and close jails across the United States, from rural counties to major cities. The Jail Is Everywhere brings these disparate voices together, featuring contributions from activists, scholars, and expert journalists. They describe the effects of this quiet jail boom, map the growth of the carceral state, and share strategies from recent efforts against jail construction, aiming to strengthen the fight against jailing everywhere.

With a foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore.