Deplorable or Disposable? The Carceral State and ‘Breaking Bad’ in Rural America

This chapter examines the limitations of viewing the US carceral state primarily through a racial disparities lens centred on differences in incarceration rates between whites and blacks. It surveys important shifts since the 1970s in who is being incarcerated in the United States, including racial, ethnic, gender, and geographic shifts, most notably between urban and rural areas. It deploys three common frameworks used to help explain the rise of mass incarceration and the hyper-incarceration of African Americans—the culture of control, the culture of poverty, and the war on drugs—to analyse the deepening penetration of the carceral state outside of major urban areas and to examine the opioid crisis.