Spiritual Entrepreneurs: Florida’s Faith-based Prisons and the American Carceral State, by BRAD STODDARD

Extract

Faith-based prisons in the United States are not a reminiscence of the past. Neither are they a small-scale experiment carried out in the margins of the carceral system. As the religious scholar Brad Stoddard explains in this book, faith-based prisons are a growing phenomenon gaining centrality amid a context of high incarceration rates, high recidivism rates and a weakened welfare system. Although Stoddard focuses his research in the state of Florida, he depicts faith-based prisons not as a southeastern exception, but a more general trend.

Through a critical ethnographic approach, Stoddard’s book attempts to answer a relevant question: How have faith-based prisons become perceived as a plausible solution to the growth of incarceration rates in the United States? He aims to understand both the historical and structural factors that paved the way for the emergence of faith-based prisons, how these institutions have grown, and how they have navigated legal, political, and economic constraints.