From Nimble NIMBY to Palpable PIMBY: Anti-Blackness in George Deukmejian’s California Prison Boom

Abstract

When California Governor George Deukmejian assumed office in 1983, the state had not added to its twelve prisons in eighteen years. During his two terms, Deukmejian oversaw the construction of eight prisons — a 67% increase in eight years. This paper attempts to locate the impetus of this prison boom by analyzing three siting struggles in southern California. It argues that past scholarship fails to account for the interaction between the state and sited communities. Specifically, state-centered research fails to account for the power of city officials while rural-centered research fails to account for systemic factors. Accordingly, this paper introduces the term Please in Your Back Yard (PIYBY) to examine where and why the state sited a prison and how they tried to convince the community to accept it. PIYBYism complements the existing Not in My Back Yardism (NIMBYism) and Please in My Back Yardism (PIMBYism). The paper analyzes the interaction between the three terms, revealing that ideological, not economic concerns, caused the California prison boom. The prison boom emerged from a tough-on-crime moment — one that was necessarily anti-black. The three siting battles support this conclusion because anti-blackness permeated every group’s rhetoric. This paper, then, challenges the subject’s prevailing scholarship: politics lies at the base of the prison system. Even if one accepts the economic link, the economy only mattered in that it exacerbated an ongoing political movement that attempted to reassert white supremacy.