Post #4219723

This month #slowBookClub read Angela Y. Davis's Are Prisons Obsolete? I highly recommend it, it's short, it's clear and well-written, and it has a great chapter on 'what do we do instead?' I was put off by the word "Obsolete" in the title. Partly it felt like if you're going to make one argument against it in the title, "old-fashioned" is not that convincing of one. But the way she threads the history of how we got here and the question of where we go next make it fit. my takeaway: Prison Industrial Complex Abolition is an entrenched problem with two major modes of approach: 1. Chip away at criminalization - decriminalize things, strength the social safety net, get people housing, food, education, and health care. This is mostly stuff we can vote for. 2. A common empathy for humanity or grounding in human rights. No one should be getting raped, regardless of whether they are in prison. No matter what a person has done, they don't deserve to be treated as sub-human.