Book Review: Big house on the prairie: Rise of the rural ghetto and prison proliferation by J. M. Eason

In Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation, John Eason updates the literature on the convergence between race, class, inequality, and the forces driving prison proliferation in the rural United States. This is an ethnographic study of one such case in Forrest City, AR, but Eason’s placement model can be applied to many similarly situated prisons in rural areas.

This is not a book about prisons. In this study prisons are an institutional actor in a larger story about how stigmatized rural towns, plagued by decades of structural inequality and deindustrialization, will sometimes seek out stigmatized industries in an effort to revive the local economy. Examples of these locally undesirable land uses (LULUs) include paper mills, hazardous waste disposal facilities, chemical factories, nuclear plants, and so on. Prisons are included in this group because they are seen by many scholars and community members as racially divisive instruments of social control. Indeed, as is often observed when LULUs such as halfway houses and homeless shelters are proposed, communities tend to respond with a vociferous “not in my backyard” when confronted with the idea of building a prison in their hometown (Lyon-Callo, 2001; Roman & Travis, 2004).

Despite the negative connotations, this structurally and socially divided town came together to change the narrative from “not in my backyard” to “please in my backyard.” Eason models a process in which a beleaguered rural community, economically stagnant and stuck in a post-Jim Crow racial caste system, experiences a tenuous alliance between White elites and Black race leaders to boost community support for building a prison. It is through this coalition that the town changes the narrative regarding a prison’s stigma, which helps attract the political support and capital needed for the project. In Eason’s model, the White elites have the political clout to initiate the process, but they cannot move forward without the acquiescence of race leaders, who by not voicing opposition infer their tacit approval.

Here is where the stigmatization of the rural ghetto comes into play. Forrest City, like many rural towns, has areas with concentrated disadvantage. This is not a subject that receives a lot of attention in the criminological literature. Migration patterns of both Whites and Blacks over the past 40–50 years and changes to the economic structure have led to the development of rural ghettos that produce the same subcultures commonly seen in urban ghettos (Wilson, 1987). Race leaders, who feel responsible for doing something to alleviate the conditions of these ghettos, find themselves in the position of having to accept and help promote an otherwise undesirable institution for the sake of the town’s health.

Race leader acceptance is key because unlike other types of LULUs, prisons require political acceptance long before the project gets underway. In the case of Forrest City (which was pursuing a federal prison), the Federal Bureau of Prisons will not even consider building in an area where there is strong opposition. With this in mind, Eason (2017) identifies four key factors involved in the placement of a prison:

Prison demand is based on local and nonlocal preferences;

Eason then moves on to examining the effect the prison had on the community (given its framing as an economic savior). While the extant literature largely focuses on the negative impacts of prison building on localities (such as Morell’s [2012] work that characterizes the prison as part of a carceral state that failed in its promise to deliver economic prosperity), Eason found that the prison somewhat helped the Forrest City economy. However, the effect is diluted and very hard to measure, other than the impact on overall population counts. Wynne seemed to benefit more from the influx of new prison staff than Forrest City did, but that can be traced back to problems with Forrest City’s economic underdevelopment and deep racial divides. That being said, while the prison did not significantly increase the economic health of Forrest City, it did help stabilize it. The prison “should be understood as neither panacea nor pariah for rural towns” (Eason, 2017: 171p. 171). Prisons are not saviors but they can have an impact on the local economy.

The biggest contribution of this work is its relevance to rural criminology and the influence of the rural ghetto. Consistent with his 2012 work on the intersection between the hyperghetto and prison proliferation, Eason is expanding on the idea that agencies need stigmatized areas to build their facilities, and stigmatized areas need whatever economic and political benefit prisons can provide. This oxymoron works for both parties, even though disparities in enforcement and sentencing have in part led to the need for additional prisons. The model does not work in its entirety in all cases, as prisons are not always built in areas where there is structural and racial disadvantage. The 2012 opening of a federal prison in Berlin, NH, demonstrates that economic disadvantage in predominantly White locales is enough to drive prison proliferation, and the building of federal prisons in more urban/suburban areas such as Phoenix, Tucson, and Coleman, FL (which is between Orlando and Gainesville) during the building boom shows that sitting near metropolitan areas but far enough away to minimize NIMBY proximity concerns is an option without having extreme structural disadvantage dominate the reasoning. It is also important to remember that the Bureau of Prisons strives to house inmates within 500 miles of their release residence (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006), so new federal prison builds are in part driven by the needs of the system itself. Still, Eason’s work is compelling and represents a significant addition to the rural criminology literature.