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“It's Just Black, White, or Hispanic”: An Observational Study of Racializing Moves in California's Segregated Prison Reception Centers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Philip Goodman
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Abstract

This article takes as its launching point a 2005 U. S. Supreme Court case, Johnson v. California (543 U.S. 499), which ruled that the California Department of Corrections' unwritten practice of racially segregating inmates in prison reception centers is to be reviewed under the highest level of constitutional review, strict scrutiny. Relying on observational data from two California prison reception centers, this research is grounded in an interactionist perspective and influenced by Smith's work on “institutional ethnography.” I examine how racialization occurs in carceral settings, arguing that officers and inmates collaborate to arrive at a “negotiated settlement” regarding housing decisions. They do so working together (but not always in agreement) to shape how an inmate is categorized in terms of ‘race’/ethnicity and gang/group affiliation, within a framework established by official Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation paperwork and related institutional understandings of housing needs. The findings demonstrate that administrators, officers, and inmates alike have influence over the process by which people are categorized and ‘race’ is produced, even as they derive their power from different sources and are both enabled and constrained by the relationship between them. I conclude that California prisons are, as Wacquant has put it, “the main machine for ‘race making’” (2005:128), and that the fuel for that machine—a series of patterned, negotiated settlements—happens in real time, “on the ground,” and with important consequences for inmates, officers, and administrators.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 735 - 770
Copyright
© 2008 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

First and foremost I would like to thank Valerie Jenness, whose support of this project was unwavering and who provided extensive and thoughtful feedback on many, many drafts. Likewise, I would like to thank Kitty Calavita, Susan Coutin, Cheryl Maxson, Chad Trulson, Shauhin Talesh, and Loïc Wacquant for reading earlier drafts of this article and providing thoughtful and critical feedback. Jonathan Simon, as associate editor, provided helpful comments, including the suggestion of thinking about construction versus enforcement; three anonymous reviewers provided trenchant and insightful commentary on an earlier version. The entire review process of this article was managed by an Associate Editor of Law & Society Review. Various aspects of this research were presented at the 2006 meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, the Law and Society Association, and the American Society of Criminology. I owe a debt to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which generously allowed me access to several prison reception centers; in particular, then-Director Jeanne Woodford was very supportive of this project. Funding for one of my ancillary site visits was generously provided by the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections at the University of California, Irvine. Last but not least, I would like to thank the many inmates and officers who allowed me to access, uninvited by them, a brief moment in their daily lives.

References

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Case Cited

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