UC Irvine

The following is a case study of the early history of the California Institution for Men (CIM) in Chino, CA, a state prison both unique in its location and initial operations yet representative of much wider trends in the history of the 20th century United States. This study explores how metropolitan spatial and political developments informed the expansion of California’s and the United States’ carceral state in the late twentieth century. Weaving together literature from metropolitan and carceral history, this work reveals how purported suburban moral panics over urban crime influenced prison practices at CIM, leading the facility to become increasingly punitive as a means of appeasing citizens’ demands for greater safety and enhancing the city’s property values and quality of life. CIM was originally imagined by early 20th century progressives as a “prison without walls” designed to rehabilitate and reform nonviolent incarcerated men through job training and educational programs, harm reduction policies, and providing the population with greater freedom of physical movement and the ability to make more meaningful independent choices. These practices largely came to an end by the 1980s. This change was due in part to national and statewide moves towards mass incarceration that led to overcrowding, reduced budgets for programs, and reduced public support for the rights of incarcerated people. However, this case study demonstrates that local factors, most prominently the mounting pressure from the white middle-class suburbanites who flocked to and transformed the once-rural Chino Valley after World War II, also contributed to these changes. Their community organizing and municipal policy making demanded that American prisons, both in their backyards and beyond, remained focused on incarcerating and punishing some of California’s most marginalized citizens rather than offering them tangible support and a genuine opportunity for economic and social mobility after leaving prison. This case study of CIM brings studies of suburban political development into closer conversation with the rise of mass incarceration, revealing the ways these critical components of the twentieth century United States informed and shaped each other.