French language
Published May 6, 2021 by Au Diable Vauvert.
In a rare and welcome exception to Betteridge's Law, Davis convincingly walks us through the main reasons that the modern institution of prisons is unacceptable by any reasonable moral standard, and does not actually fulfill any social function. Well, apart from allowing corporations to appropriate public resources and enslave people for their labor. Fuck prisons, ACAB, restorative justice now.
This was brief and to the point! I like it.
War für mich ein guter Einstieg in die Prison-Abolishment-Bewegung. Leider fehlte das, nach dem ich gerade in Büchern dieses Genres suche, nämlich mehr praktische Beispiele. Aber die gibt dann vielleicht das nächste Buch her.
Was mir jedenfalls gefiel: Wie zugänglich und mit Beispielen Davis häufig schreibt. Was leider etwas anstrengte: Die ständigen Wiederholungen, obwohl das Buch an sich ja eh schon sehr kurz ist. Aber vielleicht war das so wie bei Marx: 100x das gleiche in leicht anderen Worten schreiben, damit es ankommt?
A must-read account of a question few seem willing to ask. Davis poses a number of questions and poses their answers using history, personal stories, and statistics. If you believe prisons are an essential feature of justice, you may become an abolitionist by reading this book.
My notes and highlights: anaulin.org/blog/book-notes-are-prisons-obsolete/
An important foundational text for understanding the case against the carceral "justice" system. Historical context for the development of imprisonment as the primary response to undesired behavior (as defined by the state) informs Davis's analysis of the popularization of the crime/punishment dichotomy in an effort to inure the population to, or at least publicly justify the criminalization of marginalized communities as the engine for increasing profits in an ever-expanding number of private sector businesses that make up the prison industrial complex. The final chapter provides proposals for decarceration and decriminalizing in the pursuit of abolition.
Opens by asking why most of us feel our rights and liberties are improved by the presence of the carceral loss of the same by so many within our communities. Best read as the background starting point for later The New Jim Crow etc, proposes considering replacing much of what we expect from prison to the educational, welfare, mental services etc that insufficiently are being substituted by police and prison.
Absolutely brilliant book. Please read this.
You can find it in pdf form here: www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf
