Prologue: America as Living Laboratory of the Neoliberal Future

contain the social and turbulence induced by the fragmenta-tion of wage work and the polarization of urban space. The sociological analysis of the stupendous ascent of the penal state in the States after the peaking of the Civil Rights movement demonstrates that such is not the case. Entering into the living laboratory of the neoliberal revolution also has the virtue of revealing in quasi-experimental fashion the colossal social cost and the irreversible debasement of the ideals of freedom and equality implied by the criminalization of social insecurity.