Scholars use carceral state to describe how US government grew around punishment in the late 20th century. Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Golden Gulag (2007) traced how California built prisons to absorb surplus land, labor and capital. Other historians have linked the system to slavery, convict leasing and Jim Crow.
Incarceration is only part of it. At the end of 2023, about 3.8 million adults were on probation or parole, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about twice the number held in prisons and jails. Fines and fees, electronic monitoring, school police, child welfare investigations and immigration enforcement extend punishment into homes and schools.
The carceral state reaches Black, Latino, Indigenous and poor communities most intensely. Using this term shifts attention from individual prisons to the whole system, which is why abolitionists use it when they argue for change beyond prison reform.