Are Prisons Obsolete?

Introduction

Angela Davis wrote this short book of 2003 for a general readership, drawing on her work with Critical Resistance, an abolitionist organisation she co-founded in 1997. She traces the history of the prison from the penitentiary reforms of the early 19th century to the convict lease system after the American Civil War, in which she sees a continuation of slavery, and analyses the steep rise in incarceration since the 1980s together with the economic interests bound up with it. Prisons, she argues, do not reduce crime but deal with poverty, racism and addiction by removing people from society. Instead of better prisons she proposes a range of alternatives, from schooling and health care to restorative justice.

More works by Angela Davis

• 1981Women, Race and Class