Abstract

Over the past 50 years, the U.S. financed a massive physical and fiscal expansion of prisons via the municipal bond market—with devastating results. This project is the first to shine a light on the role of municipal debt in state-level carceral decision making, spotlighting the ways that the municipal bond market affects states’ capacities to incarcerate.

This Article argues that the two primary controls of states’ use of the carceral bond market—(1) market discipline and (2) states’ fiscal constitutions—are particularly ineffective at limiting states’ spending on prisons. This failure to restrain states’ spending through the carceral bond market enables private markets and the ultrawealthy to profit from public incarceration, while simultaneously foreclosing the possibility of decarceral futures. Drawing on surveys of municipal securities, filings, and state constitutions; case law; and media coverage of financial markets, this Article catalogs how the municipal debt market distorts accountability in states’ carceral decision making.

Because of this distortion, this Article also argues that issuing carceral debt demands additional process. States issue these carceral bonds, agreeing to pay them back over 30-year terms with little public input. Once a state issues this debt, it becomes incredibly difficult to walk back the carceral clock. Scholars and activists have long looked for levers of power to hold the carceral state accountable, and this Article further argues that they should look to the carceral state’s creditors.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Publication Information

29 Lewis & Clark Review 459-528 (2025)

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