How Gentrification Depends On Mass Incarceration

The massive injustices perpetrated by the industrialized prison system in the USA are well documented. But the voices of those who are victims of mass incarceration—the subjects of investigative journalism—are not so often heard.

Lacino Hamilton is in year 23 of his 80-year sentence in maximum security prison for a nonviolent crime he still claims he did not commit. He is also an articulate and convincing writer. In this essay he offers a unique perspective on the relationship between gentrification in underserved neighborhoods and the disproportionate incarceration of people of color in North America’s jails.

"I believe we will only rid society of prisons when we also find a way to abolish gentrification."

Hamilton explains how the once thriving “Cass Corridor”, a majority African American neighborhood in his home city of Detroit, was turned into a “ghost town” in the late 80s via discriminatory economic policies and blatantly racist policing practices. Hamilton himself was locked up after a routine “roundup” and charged (he claims), like many others, with a “manufactured crime”.

The mass incarceration and community destruction Hamilton describes paved the way for real estate developers to lay claim to the Cass Corridor, followed by wealthier (read: whiter) citizens, who now dominate the neighborhood. Politicians and city planners aided the gentrification in the name of "urban renewal"—renewing an area that had been gutted by them and their predecessors.

Upon trying to return to their community now, former residents like Hamilton find themselves unable to afford life there. In this way:

“People are being released into a permanent undercaste: This is how gentrification succeeds in disappearing working-class and poor people to make way for a more affluent population.”