Extending the Hyperghetto: Toward a Theory of Punishment, Race, and Rural Disadvantage

Within the sociology of punishment the hyperghetto provides a theoretical framework connecting structural and cultural linkages across mass incarceration, race, and urban disadvantage. Although this nexus is recognized as a focal point driving the prison building boom of the last 40 years, less is known about the role of rural disadvantage in this process. This is surprising given that more than 60% of the 1,600+ U.S. prison facilities are located in nonmetropolitan communities. Here, the author argues that by extending the hyperghetto we can better understand the confluences of race, punishment, and rural disadvantage in the U.S. prison-building boom. Implications for future research are as follows: first, the hyperghetto can help explain the reorganization of space in rural communities, the context of the prison-building boom, and the impact of the criminal justice system in rural communities; second, the hyperghetto provides a discursive connection between rural and urban microlevel community functions of stigma and disadvantage; third, the hyperghetto can be used to anchor a new critical rural criminological discourse.