Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision

by Brendan McQuade

The United States has poured over a billion dollars into a network of interagency intelligence centers called “fusion centers.” These centers were ostensibly set up to prevent terrorism, but politicians, the press, and policy advocates have criticized them for failing on this account. So why do these security systems persist? Pacifying the Homeland travels inside the secret world of intelligence fusion, looks beyond the apparent failure of fusion centers, and reveals a broader shift away from mass incarceration and toward a more surveillance- and police-intensive system of social regulation. 

Provided with unprecedented access to domestic intelligence centers, Brendan McQuade uncovers how the institutionalization of intelligence fusion enables decarceration without fully addressing the underlying social problems at the root of mass incarceration. The result is a startling analysis that contributes to the debates on surveillance, mass incarceration, and policing and challenges readers to see surveillance, policing, mass incarceration, and the security state in an entirely new light.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Crime

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2019

Reviews

[Michael Eromin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I greatly enjoyed and appreciated this book! It examines modern day intelligence led policing, which in and of itself is fascinating, but places ILP in a broader social and historical context. The arguments put forth make you as a reader really have to grapple with how our society should function and challenges the normal notions of reform when it comes to matters of policing, intelligence gathering, and really any institutions. Reading this book left me thinking, wanting to discuss and wanting to read more.

[Is it cold in here? · Rating 2 out of 5]

The narrative structure was difficult to get through. It only made sense to me after I read the first appendix where the author explains how his research proceeded and how that eventually translated into this book.

To me, the central theme of the book, that the expansion of intelligence fusion is an outgrowth of the shift towards pacifying the surplus population found useless by modern capitalism, itself a result of the development of the workfare-carceral state, is on tenuous ground when basing that outgrowth on the study of just a few fusion centers. The author admits the capabilities of fusion centers nationwide varies considerably so it seems the proliferation of fusion centers is used to enter the larger conversation of mass surveillance when you could skip right to that larger conversation.

[Alan Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of detailed information; sorely lacking in narrative structure, and really clunky writing. Waaaay too many acronyms!