From Nimble NIMBY to Palpable PIMBY: Anti-Blackness in George Deukmejian’s California Prison Boom
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Date
2020-08
Authors
Hollenbeck, Jakob
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
When California Governor George Deukmejian assumed office in 1983, the state had not
added to its twelve prisons in eighteen years. During his two terms, Deukmejian oversaw
the construction of eight prisons — a 67% increase in eight years. This paper attempts to
locate the impetus of this prison boom by analyzing three siting struggles in southern
California. It argues that past scholarship fails to account for the interaction between
the state and sited communities. Specifically, state-centered research fails to account
for the power of city officials while rural-centered research fails to account for systemic
factors. Accordingly, this paper introduces the term Please in Your Back Yard (PIYBY) to
examine where and why the state sited a prison and how they tried to convince the
community to accept it. PIYBYism complements the existing Not in My Back Yardism
(NIMBYism) and Please in My Back Yardism (PIMBYism). The paper analyzes the
interaction between the three terms, revealing that ideological, not economic concerns,
caused the California prison boom. The prison boom emerged from a tough-on-crime
moment — one that was necessarily anti-black. The three siting battles support this
conclusion because anti-blackness permeated every group’s rhetoric. This paper, then,
challenges the subject’s prevailing scholarship: politics lies at the base of the prison
system. Even if one accepts the economic link, the economy only mattered in that it
exacerbated an ongoing political movement that attempted to reassert white supremacy.
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Keywords
George Deukmejian, Not in My Back Yard, NIMBY, prison boom