The Dictionary of Human Geography

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prisons may also seek to reform inmates to

reduce the possibility of re-offending.

Although confinement is central to all prisons,

incarcerative institutions vary in the types of

offenders they house and the degree of security

that they ensure.

The geographical literature on prisons is

scant, despite the manifold geographical con-

ditions and consequences of practices of incar-

ceration. Imprisonment is essentially a

territorialized form of punishment, a banish-

ment from social life. In this way, it is an

extreme manifestation of the territorialpower

of thestate. Prisons can also be considered in

terms of their own internal geographies, the

ways in which they are constructed to maxi-

mizesurveillanceand control, a process col-

ourfully and famously outlined by Foucault

(1995 [1975]). These geographies, in turn,

structure a particular social order, a ‘society

of captives’ (Sykes, 1958), who adapt to

prison life and its various dangers. Prisons

typically contain different levels of confine-

ment, such that those who are viewed as espe-

cially problematic inmates can be isolated in

solitary conditions. Increasingly, whole insti-

tutions – so-called ‘super maximum security’

(or ‘supermax’) prisons – are dedicated to

housing those violent criminals presumed to

be habitual offenders in conditions of extreme

isolation (Rhodes, 2004).

More macro-oriented analyses see prisons as

reflective of wider social patterns, such as eco-

nomic dynamics. Since 1980, the number of

people imprisoned in the USA has increased by

more than 450 per cent, and Gilmore (1998,

2007) attributes this extraordinary expansion

to the production of disposable or ‘surplus’

populations under the signs of an aggressive

militarismandneo-liberalism. She traces

the formation of an American prison–industrial

complex to state-sponsored prison construc-

tion in declining rural areas and the out-

sourcing andprivatizationof incarceration.

Prison populations can also be analysed in

terms of their demographic characteristics.

That prisons are commonly occupied by poor

people of colour is suggestive of wider patterns

of social differentiation and spatial exclusion:

incarceration can thus be understood as yet

another manifestation of racialized discrimin-

ation (seeracism). The experience of incar-

ceration works to increase these social

divisions further still, because those convicted

of crimes often face significant odds in return-

ing to the economic mainstream. These nega-

tive consequences of incarceration can affect

entire neighbourhoods where ex-convicts

cluster, and further reinforce wider social and

economic divisions between different spaces

within a metropolitan area (Fagan, 2004).

Prisons are also a key component of wider

carceral geographies. These geographies

promise to enlarge as concerns aboutterror-

ismintensify. Sites such as Guantanamo Bay

are part of a carceral archipelago, a ‘global war

prison’, used to further the ‘war on terror’

(Gregory, 2007). Indeed, the logic of impris-

onment is arguably extended to other terrains

• such as Gaza, often described as an extended
  ‘open-air prison’ – to monitor and control
  those deemed hostile to the particular interests
  of a state. skh

Suggested reading

Gilmore (2007); Rhodes (2004).

private and public spheres Discursively

constructed, contested categories that define

boundaries between households, market econ-

omies, the state and political participation.

The concepts are central to two distinctive,

yet intertwined, discussions of: the public

sphere, and ideologies and practices of separ-

ate spheres.

Ju ̈rgen Habermas’ account of the bourgeois

public spherehas been particularly influential

(seecapitalism;critical theory). He argued

that early capitalist societies were organized

into four institutional spheres: family-

consumer (private), market economy (pri-

vate), the state (public) and citizen-political

participation (public) – the last he identifies

as the bourgeois public sphere. As both a his-

torical phenomena and normative ideal, the

bourgeois public sphere functioned as a coun-

terweight to the state; it was where ‘the public’

was organized and represented, and served to

mediate the relations between thestateand

society. This liberal model of the public

sphere (see liberalism) was never fully

achieved, he argued, but became less attain-

able in welfare state capitalist societies, in

which the separation between the state and

economy, public and private, was dissolved,

and family-consumer and citizen roles were

transformed. The role of citizen assumed

new forms (seecitizenship): of passive recipi-

ent of publicity and social welfare client.

Habermas’ account is suggestive to geograph-

ers: he analyses landscape changes that

concretize and reinforce both the rise and

decline in active public debate (e.g. coffee

houses and nineteenth-century urban culture,

and thesuburb, respectively: Habermas, 1989

[1962]). His account of the ideal of the

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PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SPHERES