The Long Term Quotes

“Yet letting go of the feelings of security, however illusory, offered by the carceral state is risky, especially for those of us who have experienced harm. Eliminating the “cops in our hearts” and not just the ones in our heads, as antiviolence organizer Paula X.”
― Alice Kim, The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom

“Reform without a vision of fundamental change, without a politics that aims to leave no one behind, can give way to new forms of captivity and containment by the state. Take, for example, reforms such as electronic monitoring, house arrest, mandatory drug testing, and other forms of probation. While for some these alternatives might be preferable over prisons, they threaten to extend imprisonment “beyond the walls of the jail or penitentiary” into our homes and neighborhoods, as author and activist Maya Schenwar astutely points out.19 These “kinder and gentler” forms of punishment create more insidious forms of control and containment by the state and legitimate a carceral logic.”
― Alice Kim, The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom

“Abolition involves dismantling institutions that reproduce and mask harm, but it also demands the more radical work to imagine and to build up practices, vocabularies, and communities that facilitate self-determination. The work to build up community responses to end sexual violence; the mobilizations to challenge the indefinite caging of our communities; our collective and daily labor inside and outside of prisons to demand other futures—this is decidedly radical feminist work.”
― Alice Kim, The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom

“Long-term sentences, more surveillance, and increased criminalization are frequently advanced in the name of “protecting women and children”—a stance often termed “carceral feminism.” As Victoria Law explains in her contribution to this anthology, “While its adherents would likely reject the descriptor, carceral feminism describes an approach that sees increased policing, prosecution, and imprisonment as the primary solution to violence against women.” Such punitive measures purport to address the harm some women experience, yet criminalization is not a deterrent, nor a preventive tool or response capable of igniting cultural shifts that reduce violence.”
― Alice Kim, The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom

“Long-term sentences, more surveillance, and increased criminalization are frequently advanced in the name of “protecting women and children”—a stance often termed “carceral feminism.” As Victoria Law explains in her contribution to this anthology, “While its adherents would likely reject the descriptor, carceral feminism describes an approach that sees increased policing, prosecution, and imprisonment as the primary solution to violence against women.”
― Alice Kim, The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom