Ghetto, Ethnoracial Prison

Isis N. Walton & Cherie Dawson Edwards

The concept of the ghetto as an ethnoracial prison is intended to call attention to the relationships between the processes of ghetto prisonization and prison ghettoization. Ghetto prisonization refers to the process by which the ghetto has come to resemble a penal institution in which residents are segregated from the larger society and denied the privileges possessed by those outside. The related term— prison ghettoization —relates to the transformation of the penitentiary from a correctional institution guided by rehabilitative ideals to a prison “warehouse” characterized by cyclical oppression through racial divisiveness, miseducation, and violence within the prison walls. More specifically, incapacitation as a means of punishment operates like a ghetto in that it separates certain groups (overwhelmingly Black men and now, increasingly, Black women) from the larger society and keeps them confined but controlled by the larger societal apparatus. Still loosely used in research related to social policy, the exact ...

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