Are Prisons Obsolete?

According to Angela Davis...they are! Angela, best known for her association with the Black Panther Party in the 60's and 70s, is now a professor at the University of California and here delivers a balanced mix of new radical thought and well-researched history. With new prison construction at an all-time high, and prison populations increasing at unparalleled rates, now more than ever we need a critical examination of what can be rightly be called the prison industrial complex. She has said, "It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo." Angela Davis, you're much more than a hairdo! A rad feminist with an educated take on prison reform! A fine primer full of intelligent arguments!!

Professor Davis makes a definitive case for aboloshing prisons, arguing for mass decarceration and transforming our criminal justice system—and our society as a whole. She draws a powerful parallel with other abolition movements that seemed impossible until they were successful: slavery, racial segregation, and other brutally exploitative systems. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable, no matter how lucrative they were for the country's elites. We can—and, she argues, must—end prisons, too.