Prison construction is one strategy that is being proposed to deal with rising incarceration rates. In prison site selection, consideration must be given to the effect on and relationship with the host community. The assumption underlying this effort is that a positive initial relationship established during the site selection process can facilitate ongoing supportive ties between the correctional program and the community. The focus should be on interaction between groups, particularly organizations, in order to minimize antagonism in the community toward prisons and to reduce community disruption. A status relations framework is developed for understanding how prison siting practices affect relations between the prison and the community. This framework is applied to the siting of California prisons, including the case of locating Pelican Bay State Prison in rural Del Norte County. Regardless of the framework used, the ultimate goal is to evaluate the effects of prison siting practices on the subsequent quality of prison-community relations. Attention can then be concentrated on post-siting variables. 100 references, 3 notes, and 2 tables