Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California Free Audiobook Download by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

This audiobook tells the story of California's Prison Industry, focusing on how the prison system is a system that generates profit for corporations and helps to maintain a sense of national identity. The narrator, 'Machelle Williams', tells the story in an engaging way discussing different topics such as Japan's use of prisons as factories and what happened with America's prison population in 2016.

In his book Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, Ruth Wilson Gilmore narrates the history of California's prisons from the 1970s to present day. By looking at the history of prison population and criminalization in California, Gilmore examines how the state has been a model for the rest of nation and how capital has played an intricate role in shaping this pattern.

There are various reasons for criminal justice reform, but Ruth Wilson Gilmore's discussion of how California's system of mass incarceration and criminalization has emerged as the model for other states is both interesting and frightening. She analyzes the history of prisons and why they exist, discusses how this prison system was created, looked at corollary issues such as poor undocumented migrants and "surplus" populations that need to be controlled through strict policing methods, the way in which economic crises have led to a concentration in prisons, and the consequences of "security first" policies that are at an all time high so far.

In this book, Gilmore explores the history of prisons in California from founding to present day. Throughout the book, she argues that California has been actively involved in creating a global prison-industrial complex. The key to understanding California's approach to prisons is examining her relationship with surplus capital and its effects on the development of criminal justice policy.

This book takes a deep dive into the state of California and its intersections of prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in order to offer an understanding of how it can be difficult to see the connections between these seemingly disparate topics.