The Commodification of Disorganization: A Qualitative Policy Analysis of Public Housing Divestment and Prison Privatization in the Sunbelt

Public safety has traditionally been viewed through a binary of reactive law enforcement and preventive social stabilization. However, the last four decades have witnessed a dramatic shift toward relying on the penal system to manage poverty. This qualitative policy analysis utilizes a critical framework, triangulating legislative budgets, private contract clauses, and municipal housing records from Georgia and Texas, to explore how the retrenchment of public housing and the expansion of prison privatization function as deeply interconnected features of the neoliberal penal state. By analyzing regional governance in Sunbelt states, this paper argues that state and local governments systematically manufacture social disorganization through housing divestment to guarantee the steady supply of incarcerated individuals required by private prison corporations, offering a critical policy framework for severing the financial penalties associated with decarceration.