The Left & the Law: Prison Abolition

As protests against policing gain momentum, calls for change range from police reforms, defunding police departments, to the entire abolition of police departments and prisons. In their Left and the Law segment, Jan Haaken and Mike Snedeker take up philosophical and political arguments for the abolition of prisons and how leading Black racial justice activists are making their case for a radical rethinking of incarceration. They recommend the work of prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, as well as Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis.  See also the work of Mariame Kaba.

Image by Joe Piette, cropped.