Introduction

This chapter engages existing myths about the transformation of hospitals and jails in urban America and offers an alternative theory. First, it engages the explanation of “deinstitutionalization,” which holds that the mentally ill occupy the jails because of state hospital closures. Second, it offers counter-evidence that public hospitals are restricting access to medicine because states have underinvested in them. Finally, it counters the idea of mass imprisonment, in which the overinvestment in criminal justice systems would explain the use of medicine to socially control the urban poor. In light of these explanations, this chapter introduces the reader to the new evidence of the book and an alternative theory of redistributing the poor.