Boom, bust, churn: Prison closure and prison expansion in New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

This paper theorises prison closures as a constitutive element of carceral expansion, rather than an exception to it. Focusing on New South Wales (NSW), Australia, we analyse the closure and downsizing of four prisons in 2011–2012 and their relationship to a $3.8 billion prison construction programme launched just a few years later. We draw on Gilmore’s concept of the carceral ‘spatial fix’ to show how closures reorganised the state’s prison system by transforming surplus carceral capacity into fiscal capacity and creating political and economic space for new mega-prisons. The paper develops the concept of ‘prison churn’—the rapid and cyclical reworking of prison infrastructure—as a temporal mechanism through which the prison fix is operationalised. We trace the prison churn in NSW, which included prison closure, downsizing, reopening, redevelopment, and decommissioning through case studies of four prisons. The case studies illustrate how each decision taken by the state was shaped by competing, local priorities such as urban rent extraction and the desires for cheap prison labour and employment for prison staff in the regions. Our analysis reframes infrastructural restructuring as a crisis management tool that entrenches, rather than diminishes, carceral state power.