Are Prisons Obsolete?

Capitalism is the economic system of America and the Western world wherein private corporations—rather than the government—control industries of production for profit. Davis sees America’s capitalist system as increasingly involved in the justice system, particularly in its interest in prisons as a resource of cheap labor and controlled consumers. Davis observes that punishment and capitalism have been linked since the advent of penitentiaries: As capitalist industry began compensating work by the hour, prisons began calculating punishment by time owed to penitence (44). Davis asserts that capitalist interest in crime and punishment has normalized the prison in society with the hidden goal of controlling a reserve of nonunion workers for maximum profits.

Convict leasing was a system of forced labor wherein prisoners were lent to private entities for a fee to perform hard labor. In Chapter 2, Davis explores how the practice emerged after the emancipation of slaves in 1865 as a means of continuing to control the labor of Black populations. Convict leasing was abolished in the mid-20th century, but Davis argues that private prisons are the direct descendants of this exploitative system. She emphasizes throughout the text that convict leasing primarily affected Black prisoners—both men and women—and that the system was often even harsher than slavery in its punishments and conditions. Convict labor under this system is responsible for the expansion of many industries and the development of urban centers, particularly in the southern states, though the contribution of convict laborers is often hidden.

Like the forced labor of convict leasing, chain gangs were groups of prisoners who labored while chained together—under prison staff supervision. The hard labor was often used as a punishment for prisoners, especially Black prisoners. Like convict leasing, this practice began after the emancipation of slaves in 1865. Davis draws comparisons between country chain gangs and slavery, particularly with the visual use of chains, which helped maintain the “historical resonances of slavery” (77) in the public imagination. Chain gangs were mostly eradicated by the 1950s, but Davis notes a brief resurgence in chain gangs for both men and women in the 1980s and 90s during the "tough on crime" era.

Corporal punishment—harsh bodily punishment inflicted on those convicted of breaking the law—often result in death or severe injury. It was the main form of punishment before incarceration. In Chapter 3, Davis tracks the transition from corporal punishment to incarceration, which was viewed as a more humane alternative to death and physical harm. Davis notes that death-penalty abolition and prison abolition are often put on a dichotomy—with prison being the alternative to death—and thus suggests “linking the goal of death penalty abolitionism with strategies for prison abolition” (106).

One of the underlying goals of abolitionists, decarceration seeks to limit the number of people in prison. Davis suggests that this can be done by decriminalizing nonviolent behaviors—like drug use and sex work—and by creating an equitable society that doesn’t push people toward needing to break the law to survive. Throughout the book, Davis promotes the idea that decarceration should be the central focus of prison activists, even for non-abolitionists, because she believes that the fewer people the prison system permanently affects, the better.

The main form of punishment in modern justice systems, incarceration confines convicted lawbreakers to prison for predetermined amounts of time. Although incarceration was viewed in the 19th and 20th centuries as a humane reform to corporal punishment, Davis argues that it has become an oppressive and damaging form of justice. Davis highlights solitary confinement within prisons as an especially damaging form of incarceration, as it overtly seeks to mentally punish inmates for disobedience. Davis traces the history of incarceration in Chapter 3.

Unlike detention centers—which hold convicts awaiting trial—the penitentiary is a prison that houses convicted lawbreakers as punishment for their crimes. The name “penitentiary” has a religious inflection because Quaker and Protestant reformers were primarily responsible for establishing the institutions as alternative punishment. For these groups, the isolation and silence of penitentiaries mimicked religious life and, by design, forced inmates into penitence, or a spiritual awakening of repentance. Davis notes that penitentiaries developed around the time of industrial capitalism and that the institution’s covert goal was to produce disciplined, controllable workers. The modern prison is Davis’s main target of criticism in the book, as she finds that it has increasingly abandoned its goals of reform for exploitative corporate greed—and that society’s most vulnerable pay the price.

Davis defines the prison industrial complex as “an array of relationships linking corporations, government, correctional communities, and media” (84). The term prison industrial complex was first used “to contest prevailing beliefs that increased levels of crime were the root cause of mounting prison populations” (84) Rather than simply being concerned with “crime and punishment” (85), Davis sees that the justice system has become entangled with political and economic interests that profit from growing prison populations. Davis connects the prison industrial complex to other American complexes, like the military industrial complex and the medical industrial complex, which also profit from the suffering of vulnerable populations. Davis argues that the prison industrial complex has flourished because the system considers those whom prisons victimize—mostly people of color—disposable populations. The plethora of relationships within the prison industrial complex normalizes and solidifies the prison’s place in American society, and Davis works throughout the text to find small but impactful alternatives to undo this web of punishment and profit.

Privatization is the process of a government-owned industry or business transferring ownership to a private corporation. Davis points out this trend throughout the US at large, as private firms become increasingly invested in the military, prisons, and even healthcare. Within prisons, Davis sees this as particularly harmful, as private companies that run their own prisons have less government oversight. Chapter 5 cites a key example of the harm that private prisons inflict: the Brazoria Detention Center prison tape, which showed guards at the privately run prison abusing inmates. This tape exposed long-term practices of harm, threats, and extralegal punishments hidden behind the prison’s walls. Davis finds that private corporations uphold the prison’s ideological function of hiding its connections to racism and capitalism behind the promise of doing a public service.

Slavery was a legal institution in the US from the 17th century to December 18, 1865, wherein the dominant white class bought and sold African and African American people, denied them human rights, and treated them as property. Enslaved people were forced to work and live in horrible conditions under threat of punishment, often on plantations in segregated slave communities. In 1865, the 13th Amendment passed, abolishing slavery unless as punishment for a crime. Davis sees the introduction of the convict lease system as a legal continuance of slavery after the 13th Amendment, as Black prisoners could be sent back to plantations to perform hard labor as punishment for breaking the law. Davis repeatedly compares prisons to slavery—not just because of their racist overtones but also because of the similarities between their abolitionist movements. Davis cites slavery abolition as a successful movement that proves radical opposition can dismantle these seemingly unchangeable institutions.

Davis defines super-maximum-security prisons as facilities with permanent “single cell lock-down, also referred to as solitary confinement” (50). In these special prisons, inmates are held in isolation for up to 23 hours per day, and the prison system proclaims that those housed there are the “worst of the worst” (50) in the system. Davis suggests that supermaxes are akin to the earliest designs for penitentiaries—extreme isolation and sensory deprivation—but that they no longer pretend to offer spiritual rehabilitation. Instead, supermaxes are almost always a form of outright punishment. Supermaxes were first introduced in the US, but other countries, like Australia and South Africa, built supermax prisons following US’s lead. Davis considers this a dangerous trend, as even the staunchest proponents of supermax prisons know the harm that such isolation can do to prisoners.