Are Prisons Obsolete?

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.