Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition in Globalizing California

The author of Golden Gulag is a professor at USC and a founding member of Critical Resistance, an anti-prison group. While that’s a pretty fair indicator of her intentions, Golden Gulag is a wide-ranging, well-documented analysis of the relationship between California’s ever-growing, ever-more-troubled prison system and the economic forces of globalization. Some sections are a tough go, full of statistics on crime and the economy. Others are readily accessible and emotionally clear: The prologue and epilogue individualize the statistics by providing the stories of the incarcerated and their loved ones. As the state finally acknowledges the failure of the prison system, Gilmore’s book couldn’t be more timely—or more accurate in its assessment that California’s prisoners are our families.