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Purpose – This study examines the legal system's responses to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans particularly in the first two weeks after the storm. During this period, issues of law and order were a primary concern of government decision makers, and these issues framed those of rescue of and aid to the survivors.

Approach – The chapter draws on the analytic concept of the carceral state as it is publicly displayed in official reactions to disaster rumors of disorder and violence. The empirical focus is on policing activity and on events at the Orleans Parish Prison and Camp Greyhound, a temporary detention center established after the storm.

Findings – Largely unfounded rumors of disorder, including roaming gangs, extensive looting, rape, and murder, fueled the emphasis on law and order and policing and carceral decisions of officials. Actions intended to facilitate an individual's survival or comfort or evacuation were often treated as criminal. New Orleans became a prison city.

Originality – The analysis develops the concept of a “prison city” as an embodiment of the carceral state and suggests that the carceral state prompts and reinforces rumors about disorder and the tendency to designate policing and incarceration as essential first responses to disasters in the United States.

In view of the global warming that has increasingly been plaguing the earth, it should be no surprise that the world has been witnessing an unprecedented wave of natural disasters over the past decades. Among the most important of these natural calamities in recent years, mention can be made of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 2004, hurricanes Katrina and Irene in the United States in 2005, cyclone Nargis in Burma in 2008, the Haiti earthquake of 2010, the Russian heat wave of 2010, the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri, and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Ranging from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, and floods to heat waves, storms, and epidemics, the field of disaster research presents a myriad of questions for social-scientific exploration.

Neoliberalism has profoundly influenced the relationship between law and the state. Market rhetoric and ideology have fostered Janus faces of law, a double vision of law where both sides of the face adhere to one another through neoliberalism. One face relies on market values and individual liberty, seemingly favoring the reduction of state authority, actually to enhance law’s power. The other Janus face, also drawing on values of market efficiency and individual responsibility, expands criminal justice and its role in the state. Together the Janus faces of law diminish democratic values and practices of law in favor of economic growth, efficient governance, and punishment.