This talk examines community struggles against the expansion
of Maryland's prison system in the 1970s and 1980s. In doing so, it
illustrates how an eclectic group of activists in Baltimore helped to
make prison projects in the city untenable. While state actors pursued
several sites in Baltimore, such as docking a "prison ship" in the
Baltimore harbor, city residents successfully organized to prevent them
from being built. By the 1980s, state officials resumed prison expansion
efforts in rural Somerset County, where they found a political system
more willing to accept the ramifications of mass incarceration. In
tracing the politics of prison siting, this talk illustrates the
contested ways urban activism, and the decisions of state actors, shaped
the geography of mass incarceration.