Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
Building the Prison StateRace and the Politics of Mass Incarceration$
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.
Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration

Heather Schoenfeld

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780226520964

Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: January 2019

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226521152.001.0001

Show Summary Details
Page of

PRINTED FROM CHICAGO SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.chicago.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of Chicago Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CHSO for personal use.date: 21 May 2022

Prison Overcrowding and the Legal Challenge to Florida’s Prison System, 1970–1980

Prison Overcrowding and the Legal Challenge to Florida’s Prison System, 1970–1980

Chapter:
(p.66) Chapter Three Prison Overcrowding and the Legal Challenge to Florida’s Prison System, 1970–1980
Source:
Building the Prison State
Author(s):

Heather Schoenfeld

Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226521152.003.0003

This chapter describes the origins and initial developments around Costello v. Wainwright, the 8th Amendment lawsuit against Florida’s prison system. The chapter argues that prison conditions litigation grew out of the Civil Right Movement. In addition, it demonstrates how the federal court’s definition of the problem as prison “capacity” and the white supremacist racial project shaped state officials’ options for legal compliance. Finally, it reveals how reformist corrections bureaucrats used the court order to demand more resources for state prisons.

Keywords:   prison conditions, litigation, Civil Rights Movement, cause lawyering, 8th Amendment, Costello v. Wainwright, Louie Wainwright, Tobias Simon, prison overcrowding

Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.