Are Prisons Obsolete? (Open Media Series)

by Angela Y. Davis

Short of major wars, mass incarceration has been the most thoroughly implemented government social program of our time.”2

Recall that it had taken more than a hundred years to build the first nine California prisons. In less than a single decade, the number of California prisons doubled.

Latinos, who are now in the majority, account for 35.2 percent; African-Americans 30 percent; and white prisoners 29.2 percent.6 There are now more women in prison in the state of California than there were in the entire country in the early 1970s.

The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited.

stultifying

But it should be remembered that the ancestors of many of today’s most ardent liberals could not have imagined life without slavery, life without lynching, or life without segregation.

This leads us to two important questions: Are prisons racist institutions? Is racism so deeply entrenched in the institution of the prison that it is not possible to eliminate one without eliminating the other? These

In the aftermath of her visits, Coomaraswamy announced that “sexual misconduct by prison staff is widespread in American women’s prisons.”96

currently more people with mental and emotional disorders in jails and prisons than in mental institutions.