Are Prisons Obsolete?

by Angela Y. Davis

Overview

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable.
In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609801045
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	01/04/2011
Series:	Open Media Series: Open Media Book
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	67,348
File size:	207 KB

About the Author

ANGELA YVONNE DAVIS is a professor of history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Over the last thirty years, she has been active in numerous organizations challenging prison-related repression. Her advocacy on behalf of political prisoners led to three capital charges, sixteen months in jail awaiting trial, and a highly publicized campaign then acquittal in 1972. In 1973, the National Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners, along with the Attica Brothers, the American Indian Movement and other organizations founded The National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, of which she remained co-chairperson for many years.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	7
Ch. 1	Introduction - Prison Reform or Prison Abolition?	9
Ch. 2	Slavery, Civil Rights, and Abolitionist Perspectives Toward Prison	22
Ch. 3	Imprisonment and Reform	40
Ch. 4	How Gender Structures the Prison System	60
Ch. 5	The Prison Industrial Complex	84
Ch. 6	Abolitionist Alternatives	105
	Resources	116
	Notes	119
	About the Author	128