Are Prisions Obsolete

¶ … Prisons Obsolete?

In one of the most insightful and radical treatises on prisons and incarceration, Angela Davis asks, Are Prisons Obsolete? At first the title of her 2003 book seems ridiculous; prisons have become as ubiquitous a social institution as schools and shopping malls. The immediate answer might be that if prisons were obsolete, rapists and murderers would get off Scot-free and society would descend into lawlessness. Davis critiques this common misconception and presents a new vision of social justice. Prisons are an obsolete institution because they institutionalize discrimination and because they have failed to serve their ultimate function for rehabilitation. In fact, Davis is well-known for her phrase "prison-industrial complex," a deliberate allusion to the "military-industrial complex." Prisons, notes Davis, have become profit-making machines in a sick culture of capitalism. The system dehumanizes and denigrates democracy. Therefore, Davis does not just a humanistic revision of the prison system but prison eradication. Davis claims that like the death penalty, prisons are outmoded, unnecessary, and undemocratic and bases her argument on a combination of personal experience, statistics, and political rhetoric.

Davis effectively reframes the prison in the public consciousness. The author accomplishes her goal partly because of her colorful past as a political activist and communist during the civil rights movement, which drew her into the heart of issues related to race and gender. Race and gender are core issues backing Davis' argument against prisons. As a woman of color, Davis speaks from personal experience. Moreover, Davis bears witness to what she notes has been a revolting increase in the number of incarcerations that have taken place since the 1960s, when she began her work. The author claims that when she started out as an antiprison activist in the late 1960s, no more than two hundred thousand people were in prison in the United States but that within three decades "ten times as many people would be locked away in cages," (p. 11). Davis squarely blames the proliferation of prisons and prison inmates on racism. Prisons, according to Davis, have taken the place of slavery and legal segregation. The author embellishes her position through her characteristically deft use of language, such as by referring to the "abolition" of prison culture in America.

Davis claims the prison-industrial complex is a tool for social control in a society too lazy to address the root causes of racism, sexism, and poverty. The Marxian discourse in Davis' work presents prison culture in light of conflict theory. Conflict theorists will find Davis' arguments familiar. Disproportionate numbers of minorities in general prison populations and in maximum security prison populations substantiate Davis' claims about the relationship between race, power, and social control in modern American society. Davis' data also draws attention also to the congruence of poverty and ethnicity. An intrepid feminist scholar, Davis links incarceration to actual and symbolic misogyny. Repressive tools and practices including outright abuse render prisons obsolete.