Are Prisons Obsolete

Angela Davis was and is a predominant figure in the movement for equality and prison
abolition. Her book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, looks at the prison industrial complex and the many
different facets of it and how this system originated and how it continues to persist today.
Though I feel that I understand a lot of the basic ideas of the prison industrial complex, this book
brought forward ideas and facts which I was not aware of and showed me how far stretched the
hands of the prison industrial complex are.
Early in the book Angela Davis talks about how we are taking prisons for granted in our
society. We see them as something that is necessary and will help to reduce crime and create a
safer society but we neglect the subject of the horrors which are created by prisons. This leads to
prisons both being absent and present in our lives simultaneously. Angela Davis says that we try
to distance ourselves from the prisons because “it would be too agonizing to cope with the
possibility that anyone, including ourselves, could become a prisoner”, and I think she is right
(Davis, 15). We, as a society, have a stigma against the incarcerated. We do not wish to
acknowledge the system that we know is ineffective and inhumane because we do not know a
better replacement for it and we do not wish to act against it. We are complacent and wish to stay
oblivious to the truth of the “correctional” facilities that are in our country. And according to
Angela Davis, “this is even true for some of us, women as well as men, who have already
experienced imprisonment” (Davis, 15). I find this idea fascinating that those who have
experienced the prison industrial complex first hand and understand the faults in the system wish
to look the other way. I understand it to a point because after going through the system I would
imagine that you would just want to move on with your life and get as far away from that part of
your past as possible, but by doing so the system is perpetuated and continues to damage people
rather than support them and prepare them for life outside of prison.
As for addressing the problem with prison reform and not exactly knowing the answer, I
think Davis puts the problem into words quite aptly by saying, “the most difficult and urgent
challenge today is that of creatively exploring new terrains of justice, where the prison no longer
serves as our major anchor” (Davis, 21). When I read this, I thought the word “anchor” was very
purposeful. I saw it as Davis acknowledging that the prison industrial complex is something
which his holding back our society from moving forward, just as an anchor prevents a ship from
moving with the tide or drifting elsewhere. And I think there is a portion of society which
doesn’t want that anchor to be lifted for “the prison is not the only institution that has complex
challenges to the people who have lived with it and have become so inured to its presence that
they could not conceive of society without it. Within the history of the United States the system
of slavery immediately comes to mind” (Davis, 22). The prison system in the United States is
constructed in such a way that it benefits most those who have the power to change it. Sadly, due
to the large personal gains that can be made from investing in private prisons, there is no
incentive to reform for those in charge. I knew that prisoners were used for manual labor and
manufacturing jobs, but I had no idea how many different industries prisoners were utilized in.
“For example, they have served as valuable subjects in medical research, thus positioning the
prison as a major link between universities and corporations” (Davis, 89). To find out that
prisoners have been used for medical experimentation was startling to me. Davis recounts that
these tests were taking place back in the 1960’s. Now if medical experiments were being done to
prisoners in say the 1800s then I would probably understand a little more due to the political
climate at the time and the way people viewed prisoners and the rights that they were entitled to,
but to see that up until the 1960s people were used in medical experiments is atrocious. There
must have been human rights violations in these instances. This fact just supports the idea even
more that prisoners in the United States are treated as a disposable resource rather than people.
Davis also tries to help us see what a working solution would be for addressing the issues
of mass incarceration. She says that instead of trying to
imagine one single alternative to the existing system of incarceration, we might envision an
array of alternatives that will require radical transformations of many aspects of our society.
Alternatives that fail to address racism, male dominance, homophobia, class bias, and other
structures of domination will not, in the final analysis, lead to decarceration and will not
advance the goal of global abolition (Davis, 108).
I agree with Davis on this point that the existing system of incarceration cannot be addressed
with just one solution but rather through the implementation of different services and support
systems which would radically change how we view incarceration, rehabilitation, education, and
many other corner stones of society. Davis acknowledges that education is one of the most
powerful tools which can be used to combat the prison industrial complex. Through education
we are able to break down the school to prison pipeline and create more effective members of
society, thus lowering the rates of incarceration in this country and lessoning the need for prisons
in general. I think another part of the solution is reforming mental health care and health care as
an industry in general. Through conquering the problems that are created by discarding the
mentally ill as we do in our society we would be able to see to it that people with medical
conditions, of no fault of their own, receive the treatment they need so that they too can be
productive members of society and not just another person who is being improperly supported
and cared for in a “correctional” facility somewhere in the US.
Davis also brings forth the idea of combatting the ideology of mass incarceration and
imprisonment within society. She believes that through “creating agendas of decarceration and
broadly casting the net of alternatives helps us to do the ideological work of pulling apart the
conceptual link between crime and punishment” (Davis, 112). I had never thought about the deep
connection between the words “crime” and “punishment” and how they are essentially
inseparable when it comes to talking about how we deal with criminals today. Davis eloquently
states that we should
recognize that ‘punishment’ does not follow from ‘crime’ in the neat and logical sequence
offered by discourses that insist on the justice of imprisonment, but rather punishment –
primarily through imprisonment (and sometimes death) – is linked to the agendas of
politicians, the profit drive of corporations, and media representations of crime (Davis, 112).
Our association between “crime” and “punishment” is a fabrication that has been created by the
people in control of the for-profit prisons in society, the people who push forward legislation
leads to the unnecessary imprisonment of people who could be better reformed through other
means such as mental health counselling, rehab, or through education and actually being given
the ability to become a productive member of society rather than being destined to live a life of
crime that they wish they had never fallen into. We can also see this ideology reinforced by
popular culture. For example, in some TV shows we see “a charismatic police officer,
investigator, or prosecutor struggles with his own demons while heroically trying to solve a
horrible crime. He ultimately achieves a personal and moral victory by finding the bad guy and
throwing him in jail” (Alexander, 59). Our culture is entrenched in this idea of criminals being
convicted and punished. If we are able to break down this ideology, then maybe ideas as to how
we can reform our system of incarceration will be more prevalent and be greeted with optimism
rather than being dismissed as an idea which comes from a utopian world which will never exist.
Which brings up another problem that Davis addresses early in her book. “Prison
abolitionists are dismissed as utopians and idealists whose ideas are at bet unrealistic and
impracticable, and, at worst, mystifying and foolish” (Davis, 10). Without openness to the idea
of change, change will never come and Davis’s ideas around dismantling the ideology of “crime”
and “punishment” as well as how to combat the school to prison pipeline, I think, are reasonable
and have the potential to make a huge positive impact on society. As a society we just need to
take the first step to changing the system which continues to weigh us down and stifle growth. I
don’t know the best way to go about this problem but I think the first step is increasing the
importance that we put on having quality public education. With quality public education we can
have more people, who would have been on the streets and attracted to professions which would
eventually have them incarcerated, become people who are able to influence the world they live
in through their voice and their vote.
 Bibliography
Alexander, Michelle. The new Jim Crow: mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.
Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, 2011.
Davis, Angela Y. Are prisons obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2010.