Angela Davis and Prison Abolition
By Ryan W
Angela Davis, photographed by Djeneba Aduayom for TIME magazine
Angela Davis is a contemporary philosopher and activist perhaps best known for her work in the philosophy of punishment, especially in prison abolition. Though many agree that the justice system is in need of reform, Davis recognizes that the idea of abolishing prisons altogether probably seems absurd to most. However, she presents a compelling and nuanced argument for their elimination.
First, we must understand prison abolition not as a discrete policy to be implemented without broader societal changes. Understood in this way, prison abolition refers not so much to the act itself, but to the culmination of an implied series of changes that would make for a more just society.
Davis then asks us to examine what our current prison-industrial complex actually looks like. Our current system operates on the punitive basis of retributive justice, which is problematic in that it doesn’t actually solve the systemic issues that underlie crime in the first place. The only way retributive justice may prevent crime is through the deterrence implied in harsh and mandatory sentencing, but this has been shown to be ineffective. The US consistently leads the world in incarceration rate despite the deterrence that retributive justice supposedly provides, and the Vera Institute for Justice has also found that the general declining trend in crime nationwide has had almost nothing to do with increased incarceration. Instead, “between 75 and 100 percent of the drop in crime rates since the 1990s is explained by other factors, including the aging population, increased wages, increased employment, increased graduation rates,” and more.
So, mass incarceration has a minimal effect on crime, and those who are incarcerated, many for non-violent offenses, are often used for what essentially amounts to modern-day slave labor. If the goal of the justice system is to actually reduce crime, then it seems that the logical thing to do is to focus on the things which have been shown to work, namely education, employment, community development, and mental health support systems. Davis notes that the state of California, where she teaches, spends more per person in its prison system than its public education system. If this balance were to be reversed, prisons themselves and their retributive system of criminal justice might also be able to be replaced by rehabilitation centers and community initiatives working on the basis of rehabilitative, restorative, and ultimately transformative systems of justice.
Recently, there seems to have been progress made in this area. On January 25th, 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to stop the United States Department of Justice from renewing further contracts with private prisons. This may be one step among many in achieving Davis and her fellow abolitionists’ vision of a world free from the prison-industrial complex and a dysfunctional justice system.
