Boom, bust, churn: Prison closure and prison expansion in New South Wales, Australia
研究了澳大利亚新南威尔士州2011-2012年关闭四所监狱与随后38亿澳元监狱建设计划的关系，提出监狱关闭实为重组系统以促进进一步扩张，对关注监狱政策与刑事司法改革的研究者有用。
This paper argues that rather than signalling contraction, prison closures can operate to restructure prison systems for further growth. 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.