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Angela Davis

Are Prisons Obsolete

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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…
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Impressions

  • em 💌shared an impressionlast year
    👍Worth reading
    💡Learnt A Lot
    🎯Worthwhile

    incredibly insightful but ultimately i feel i still land on heavy prison reformation and de-commercialisation of prisons rather than abolishing them because some people (ie: serial killers/rapists) are just bad people and no amount of fixing society will change that.

    there will always be men out there who do not view women as equal and like i said in one of my quotes, misogyny is so deeply ingrained into our society i dont think we could ever fully remove it

  • Dani CyCshared an impression4 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    💡Learnt A Lot
    🎯Worthwhile
    🚀Unputdownable

Quotes

  • em 💌has quotedlast year
    According to Peter Biehl, “We tried to explain that sometimes it pays to shut up and listen to what other people have to say, to ask: ‘Why do these terrible things happen? ’ instead of simply reacting.” 136

    that is a really great thing of Amy’s parents to forgive them but i still dont feel any of the solutions given are strong enough where we would no longer need prisons as a whole.

    I 100% agree with tackling the inequality in impoverished areas and decriminalising sw, drug use and communities esp communities of colour but i feel like even though tackling these issues would significantly reduce most crimes, i dont feel any of it is strong enough to stop men and the way they view women because its so incredibly ingrained into society i dont know how we’d fully remove misogyny from society where women dont get murdered and raped and those evil people need to be removed from society where they would just continue to harm more women because fundamentally they just do not care about women.

  • em 💌has quotedlast year
    They are sent to prison, not so much because of the crimes they may have indeed committed, but largely because their communities have been criminalized.
  • em 💌has quotedlast year
    Radical criminologists have long pointed out that the category “lawbreakers” is far greater than the category of individuals who are deemed criminals since, many point out, almost all of us have broken the law at one time or another.

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