Academic literature on the topic 'Otter Creek (Vt.) – History'

Chapter 4 looks primarily at the small community of Wheelwright, Kentucky, a former coal company town. At the time of writing, Otter Creek Correctional Facility, a private prison in Wheelwright owned by Core Civic and decommissioned since 2012, is awaiting reopening (and renaming) as Southeastern Correctional Complex. Kentucky will lease the facility from the private prison company in order to house state prisoners and presumably to alleviate overcrowding at other prisons. While the presence of private prisons in the coalfields would seem to underscore the centrality of corporate profit to the region, this chapter’s examination into both Wheelwright’s history and its possible future suggests a more capacious understanding of capitalism’s role in the community, forged in the twentieth century through police power and remade in the twenty-first through the prison. In the maneuvers to reopen the prison and in the hopes of area residents for the prison to generate everything from jobs to infrastructure upgrades, this chapter examines the process of remaking social order in Wheelwright and introduces the concept of carceral social reproduction.