Sociology Compass 10/4 (2016), 261–271, 10.1111/soc4.12357 Reclaiming the Prison Boom: Considering Prison Proliferation in the Era of Mass Imprisonment John M. Eason * Texas A&M University Abstract While mass imprisonment is a central topic of investigation within the sociology of punishment, less is known about the prison boom – the period beginning in 1970 during which the number of US prison facilities tripled. Surprisingly, our understanding of prison impact on rural communities is minimal despite nearly 70 percent of the new facilities being constructed in rural areas. With little fanfare, prison prolifer- ation has severely altered the physical, social, economic, and political landscape of rural America. With few exceptions, scholars fail to consider where and why prisons are built, and how these places are impacted economically, or local perceptions of these impacts. As the next steps for this research agenda have not been clearly defined, this paper serves two purposes: (i) to differentiate and redefine the contours of the prison boom from mass imprisonment and then (ii) to explore the causes and consequences of the prison boom in building a framework to conduct future research into these critical issues. Introduction The prison boom and mass imprisonment are often used interchangeably within the literature on punishment to describe the two million plus US citizens annually denied their freedom. While mass imprisonment characterizes the dramatic annual increase in US imprisonment since 1970, the prison boom more accurately depicts the processes tripling US prison facilities from 511 to 1663 during that same period. The primary objective of this piece is to clearly distinguish the prison boom from mass imprisonment. Clarifying and differentiating these concepts are important because we are at a critical juncture in ending mass imprisonment. This is evidenced by Grammy award-winning pop sensation John Legend launching a campaign to end mass imprisonment in the spring of 2015. This call to reduce our overreliance on imprisonment comes amidst a chorus of groups that rarely agree on anything. Advocates for rolling back mass impris- onment range from liberal activists to fiscally conservative politicians. On the one hand, liberal activists argue that ending mass imprisonment is a moral imperative primarily resulting from sys- temic racial bias in the criminal justice system. On the other hand, conservative politicians main- tain that imprisonment is a poor investment of public funds. While Legend’s announcement speaks to the current salience of mass imprisonment, the inequities and inefficiencies of this phe- nomenon have been traced by academics for decades. A central impetus driving the study of mass imprisonment is David Garland’s 1990 seminal piece Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory where he lays out the central tenets of the sociology of punishment. According to Garland (1990), the sociology of punishment is a primary nexus examining the relationship between systems of punishment (the police, corrections, the courts, etc.) and con- tinuity in systems of stratification. Overall, the sociology of punishment links modern theories of crime and punishment to classical sociological theory. Empirically, scholars of punishment furnish a variety of insights into the causes and consequences of mass imprisonment (Garland © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.