ABOLITION

The first volume of a collection of essays by former political prisoner and prison abolitionist Davis.

“Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings,” writes the author in this series of striking pieces outlining the scholar and prison abolitionist’s most important ideas. The book begins with a history of U.S. prisons, which were established as humanitarian alternatives to corporal punishment—“convict leasing,” a system Davis calls “a new form of slavery,” through which incarceration transformed into a profitable business. Today, companies like Victoria’s Secret and Chevron pay prison laborers less than minimum wage to make their goods. For much of the book, Davis focuses on women prisoners who, unlike their male counterparts, were historically considered irredeemable and receive little critical attention in the scholarly literature. “Prevailing attitudes toward women convicts differed from those toward men convicts,” writes the author, “who were assumed to have forfeited rights and liberties that women generally could not claim.” In other words, while male prisoners could lose the right to vote, women prisoners never had this right to begin with, so they were punished differently. The collection ends with a series of studies Davis co-authored with scholar Kum-Kum Bhavnani about prison conditions overseas. Although these pieces present alternatives to the American prison system, Davis and Bhavnani emphasize that they should be used to develop a “radical abolitionist strategy” rather than to fix the existing system. In a brilliantly observant, profoundly knowledgeable, and unfailingly original text, the author’s passion and eloquence render even the driest facts fascinating. Although many of the pieces in this volume have been published before, even the staunchest Davis devotees are likely to discover new material and new ways to reimagine a more just world.

A must-read essay collection for anyone invested in racial equity.