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Aqwaynaa Mitchell

Anthony Alessandrini

English 2400

03/27/2021

Better Choices

In the book Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Davis, the author speaks about the history of prisons and the effects it has on society. Davis uses politics and statistics to prove many points about the never ending circle of minorities being placed in prisons. That this system is placed intentionally since the Civil War ended. In the first chapter titled, “Introduction-Prisons Reform or Prison Abolition?” she states, “In most parts of the world, it is taken for granted that whoever is convicted of a serious crime will be sent to prison”. When she says this action is being taken for granted, I wondered how. How can it be wrong for a person who committed a crime to go to prison? Also, how can prisons for granted? The reality is that the prison industry gets a pass with many of its actions because society keeps quiet. Many people including I believe that if you commit a serious crime, you should do the time. Before reading I believed there can’t possibly be an alternative to prisons. This is one of her techniques as a writer to make the reader question themselves. Davis says if there were resources in minority communities, true freedom the prison industry wouldn’t continue to grow as it continues to do.

The main argument in this book is that prisons are obsolete and should be abolished. In the first chapter she states that, “In most circles prison abolition is simply unthinkable and implausible”. At first glance I thought this to be one hundred percent true how can society possible not have a place for a criminal to go. My thoughts proved the point she made when she said, “The prison is considered so “natural” that it is extremely hard to imagine life without it. The purpose of the text is to encourage reader to question their assumptions about prison. She wants us to look deeper instead of taking what is given to us. The idea is to find an alternative and that there is an alternative.

Davis uses the development of prison in California to show how easy it is to produce with what she calls “implicit consent” from the public. Her question is, “Why are people so quick to assume that locking away an increasingly large proportion of the U.S population would help those who live in the free world safer and more secure”? My answer is that is what the population is made to believe that we benefit from locking “bad people” away. When truly it is fathers, mothers, and children being placed in the system. Minority families being subject to the prison industry stripping them of their human rights and alienation them from society. Then throwing them back into the world abused and afraid, preferring to return to the prison system that they know so well. This is the reality that she says we afraid to face the production has a never ending effect on people of our society.

The fact that minorities make up the majority of the prison population across the U.S gives racism power. Due to this minorities are classified as criminals this is what feed the racism in this country. When the truth is that the prisons were intentionally made for minorities. She speaks about the tactics southern state officials did immediately after slavery to arrest African Americans. After they passed there. Ridiculous laws the black population in prisons was on a rise. Some of these laws still exist today and are still keeping African American women and men incarcerated. Davis used a quote from Mary Ellen Curtis’s study of Alabama prisoners after the emancipation proclamation. Before the emancipation of slaves ninety nine percent of prisoners were white. After the creation of Black Codes, the majority of our Alabama prisoners were black. Curtin states that, “During the 1870s the growing number of black prisons in the South further buttressed the belief that African Americans were inherently criminal and, in particular prone to larceny. Freeing black people from slavery made hate and racism rise. This created a picture that most criminals or were black. That black people were evil. Davis also notes that Frederick Douglass spoke about we impute crime to color. So, majority of convicted black people did not commit actual crime. They were incarcerated for being black that was their crime.

Davis also speaks about white men sometimes sought to escape punishment by disguising themselves as black on multiple occasions. Davis gives an example of a case in Boston where a man named Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife and attempted to blame an anonymous black man and another case where a woman named Susan Smith killed her children and claimed that they were abducted by a black car jacker. In both these cases in many of these cases we now know that actual people were incarcerated for such crimes with no evidence proving that they are the subject sub suspect. For example, something for example a case closer to today would be the Central Park 5 assuming my reader watch the Netflix documentary you would see how racism play the role in five teens being subjected to the prison system without any guidance or protection from the legal officials that are sworn to protect citizens. Not this point in the book I began to understand the point that Davis was making which is the root of the prison system has never changed that it continues to be a house for minorities.

In Mariame Kaba’s article “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police” she speaks on her view of America’s history of law enforcement. She believes there is no way to reform the police. She. states, “The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police”. Law enforcement being the head of the prison system uses racial profiling and the power given to them to use against black people. I agree with her ideology on some points, but we all know that not every cop is a bad one. Davis has given me a new understanding of the word abolish when it comes to this topic. So Kaba is saying to abolish the Police force and possibly create and alternative. Because it can’t be reformed its history was created to incarcerate black people not to protect and serve.

Davis speaks about the effect that the legal system has on politics she states that, “In Alabama and Florida, once a felon always a felon, which entails the loss of status as rights as a right bearing citizen”. Due to this ruling black men and women were denied the rights of vote because of an actual or presumed felony record they were not allowed to cast their ballots. Davis believes Bush would have not been in the White House if that wasn't the case. And that all the events that occur in his presidential terms would have not occurred. The same goes for Trump's term as president that if our system didn't fail us, we would have not had him as a president. I just simply believe that things would have been different a lot of especially with the COVID-19 pandemic if he wasn't our president spreading hatred, racism, and lies so many lives wouldn’t have been lost. His actions effect the current President having to fix the damage before making well needed changes.