PhronesisWe apply the Displacement Framework to incarceration and criminal justice, formalizing prison as an enforced wrong attractor — a total institution (Goffman) that systematically displaces all five dimensions of S0_social (belonging, economic participation, legal compliance, family ties, identity coherence) simultaneously. Eight formal propositions plus one corollary are derived: incarceration as enforced displacement (total institution as wrong attractor), simultaneous five-dimensional displacement, family collateral displacement (children as secondary displacement casualties via ACE accumulation and community coercive mobility), the recidivism hysteresis theorem (landscape memory makes re-incarceration easier than S0_social maintenance — criminal record blocks employment, severed social bonds, PTSD from prison exposure, criminal identity, collateral consequences), mass incarceration as differential wrong attractor targeting (5x Black/white incarceration rate as structural racism formalized), solitary confinement as maximum-displacement wrong attractor (corollary: maximum hysteresis), restorative justice as return-path engineering (Braithwaite reintegrative shaming; formal comparison table showing retributive justice deepens wrong attractor while restorative justice enables return), and S0 landscape reconstruction via reentry programs (Housing First, trauma-informed desistance).
The abolition vs. reform debate is formalized as a landscape optimization question: if prison is a wrong attractor that deepens displacement rather than enabling return, the rational intervention is wrong attractor elimination. 28 citations including Goffman, Foucault, Alexander, Western, Clear, Travis, Braithwaite, Zehr, Maruna, Pager, Davis, and Wacquant.