Abstract Not one but several ‘peculiar institutions’ have operated to define, confine, and control African-Americans in the history of the United States: chattel slavery from,the colonial era to the,Civil War; the Jim Crow system,in the,agrarian,South from,Reconstruction,to the Civil Rights revolution; the ghetto,in the,northern,industrial metropolis; and, in the post-Keynesian age of desocialized wage labor and welfare retrenchment, the novel institutional complex formed,by the,remnants,of the,dark ghetto,and,the carceral apparatus,with which,it has,become,joined by a,relationship of structural symbiosis and functional surrogacy. In the 1970s, as the urban,‘Black Belt’ lost its economic,role of labor,extraction,and proved unable to ensure ethnoracial closure, the prison was called upon,to shore,up caste,division and,help contain,a dishonored and,supernumerary,population,viewed,as both,deviant,and dangerous. Beyond the specifics of the US case, this article suggests,that much,is to be learned,from,the comparison,between ghetto,and,prison as kindred,institutions of forced ,confinement entrusted,with enclosing,a stigmatized,category,so as,to neutralize the material and/or symbolic,threat it poses,for the surrounding society. Key Words African-Americans • caste • ghetto,• prison,• racial domination • stigma,• United States Theoretical Criminology © 2000 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi. 1362‐4806(200008)4:3 Vol. 4(3): 377‐389; 013521