On today’s show, host Cat Brooks explores the expansion of county jails, the fastest-growing sector of the US carceral state. Nearly every county and major city in the United States has a jail, the short-term detention center controlled by local sheriffs that funnels people into prisons and long-term incarceration. While the growing movement against incarceration and policing has called to reform or abolish prisons, jails have often gone unnoticed, or in some cases seen as a “better” alternative to prisons.” Jails are also widely used for immigrant detention by ICE and the U.S. Marshals and as a place to offload people that prisons can’t hold.
Guests: Jack Norton is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Governors State University, and Judah Schept is a Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. Judah Schept is the author of Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia and Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion. Norton and Schept with Lydia Pelot-Hobbs are the authors of the book The Jail is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration.
Our Resistance in Residence is Performer Artist Austin Antoine.
Austin Antoine will be performing at the San Francisco International Arts Festival
The 2026 Festival runs from April 29 to May 10
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