ABSTRACT
This chapter combines archival data and statistical analysis to investigate the context-specific ways that prisons expanded and affected communities in Britain. We focus closely on the role of political economy and the impact of de-industrialisation which flowed from the Thatcherite management of the economy. We present evidence of a significant increase in the number of prisons in the counties where the coal mining industry was dismantled during the 1980s and 1990s. Using Poisson regression and controlling for population changes, we find that coal mining counties were significantly more likely to acquire new prisons between 1981 and 2001 than those areas that were not affected by de-industrialisation. We apply Derrida's thinking on hauntology to re-examine the socio-spatial legacy of Thatcherism in these communities as a means to understand history and culture, and the unravelling of the past, present, and future.
