Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
Title: Are Prisons Obsolete?
Author: Angela Davis
Published: 2003
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 115
This is the ideological work that the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.
We would not be looking for prisonlike substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment – demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.
(I couldn’t choose one)
In Brief:
Really amazingly well-written, -researched, and -argued book. It’s barely 100 pages yet impressively comprehensive, and it’s Angela Davis, so you really have no excuse not to read!
Rating: 4.5
Synopsis:
In Are Prisons Obsolete? professor and activist Angela Davis makes the argument for prison abolition. Though written in 2003, it’s still relevant today, with nearly 2.3 million Americans currently behind bars. The chapters in this book could each be their own, and focus on prison reform, the role of slavery, gender and sexual assault, and the prison-industrial complex.
Davis delves into the surprisingly short history of modern prisons, as well as their racist and sexist underpinnings. She examines the impact of slavery – pointing out that after emancipation, white Southerners pushed for a form of criminal justice that would legally restrict the freedoms of formerly enslaved people, essentially extending slavery as an institution. Crimes like vagrancy would be coded as Black, and Black prisoners would be sent to forced labor, often at former slave plantations, where the same vicious, corporal punishments were used. She also discusses the issues women face in prison, illustrating that they significantly more likely to be placed in mental institutions, receive psychiatric drugs, and experience sexual assault. Finally, she addresses the prison-industrial complex – the way that prisons and prisoners could be used to increase profits, and subsequent skyrocketing numbers of prisons and prisoners, just in the last couple of decades.
Ultimately, Davis argues that prisons do not solve nor deter crimes, but only perpetuate racist, sexist, and capitalist norms. She makes a poignant case for instead creating a society that does not need prisons, with an array of alternatives that radically address ”racism, male dominance, homophobia, class bias, and other structures of domination.” As a few examples, she points to decriminalization of drug use and undocumented immigrants, job and living wage programs, and community-based recreation; on a whole, she advocates for reshaping justice around reparation rather than retribution.
Where I’m At:
This was our second June/July choice for Non-Fiction Book Club, along with The End of Policing. Again, I don’t think I have to explain the reasoning?
Most of the context I shared in my last post I also brought to reading this book. I’d been to a lecture about prison abolition a few months before quarantine started with a friend (I think? What is time?), so the concept wasn’t entirely new to me, but I walked away from that talk still pretty skeptical. It seemed unattainable, and I didn’t feel particularly compelled to pursue it further.
Needless to say, things changed. I still feel unsure if prison abolition is something attainable in my lifetime, but it’s still worth serious consideration and action.
Getting Into it:
First of all, Angela Davis is a badass, and it comes through int his book. It’s passionate, her voice strongly carrying through the words, making it more personal, more direct, and ultimately more compelling than something like The End of Policing. She isn’t just laying out the facts – she reaches out to the reader personally, urgently, with her call for a new, more humane criminal justice system.
Accordingly, I felt very challenged while reading this book. More than once I had to put it down, step away, and give myself time to seriously think through Davis’s arguments. My instinct is to want “bad guys” to go to prison. My mind leaped to the extreme – say, someone like Harvey Weinstein. It’s hard to imagine a world where I’m satisfied that he’s not behind bars.
But gently, persuasively, Davis points out that that opinion isn’t a predetermined necessity. Prisons are not a fact of life, not natural to this world. Like any other institution, they were created by man. And they have flaws. And they don’t have to be permanent. I’ve been trained to want people who break the rules to be locked up. But I didn’t have to be. Future generations don’t have to be.
This isn’t just a policy book. It’s inspirational, Davis calling us to be better versions of humans than what we are now. She tells a story at the end that seems almost unreal, or parents forgiving the men who murdered their daughter, even loving them, after going through a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, eventually working together to form a foundation on the daughter’s behalf. Told in just a couple of paragraphs, that story made me cry. It shows a certain strength and grace that is possible for us to achieve as humans. It’s not easy, but it’s something to strive for, something to believe in. Given the time, it reminded me of John Lewis forgiving the men who nearly beat him to death. I’m reminded that we are capable of that. It’s a glorious, honorable quality of humanity. We could create a world and systems to encourage that quality, to encourage what is good within us, not our darkness, not revenge.
Again – it’s not easy. I can’t even imagine all the work we’d have to do to create the world Davis envisions. I can feel how that kind of cynicism, pessimism, can turn into laziness, even within myself. Too much work, so why bother? But in the course of humanity, we have overcome things that seemed impossible, dismantled some of our darkest institutions. This could be one of them. And even if we don’t make it in my lifetime, we could do something, something to make it better, something to move forward and embrace our better angels.
