The Prison of Democracy

Sara Benson’s brilliant study of Leavenworth Penitentiary persuasively argues that what is represented as a contemporary project of mass incarceration has very deep historical roots, that the prison has always been the unacknowledged center of U.S. political history. Most importantly, Benson’s work challenges political scientists and activist intellectuals alike to generate new conceptions of democracy unfettered from the anchoring idea of the prison.—Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz The imaginative rereading, through primary sources, of Fort Leavenworth and a host of other subjects including abolitionism, border prisons, North-South relations, and the campaign against Native Americans adds up to an original and exceptionally significant piece of research and scholarship. I enthusiastically recommend Prison of Democracy to scholars and students of US history, political science, and sociology.—Desmond King, author of Separate and Unequal: African Americans and the US Federal Government A significant contribution to the literature regarding race, crime, and punishment. The analytical insight that the author provides through a rereading and recentering of Leavenworth is both a contribution to and an immanent critique of racialized notions of mass incarceration.—Daniel Kato, author of Liberalizing Lynching: Building a New Racialized State