Prisons, Freedom and the Poor

Born in Birmingham, Alabama – also birth place of the Black Liberation movement – Angela Davis lost a number of her childhood friends and acquaintances in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and as a result went on to become an active member of the Black Panthers and a member of the Communist Party of America. She spent eighteen months in jail and on trial in the early 1970s in the USA after being placed on the FBI's 'Ten Most Wanted ' list. After her acquittal, even or maybe especially with a PhD, finding work was a struggle within the dominant political culture of the country; however she continued and is still engaged in radical abolitionist politics, struggling for the freedom of all to express and gain their own freedoms in all areas of life. She lectures and writes about such topics as racism, multiculturalism, the meaning of freedom, democracy, crime, punishment and the prison-industrial complex. She is particularly concerned with the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to schools and the education system in general. Much of her energy now goes into engaging her audiences to think more seriously about the possibility of a world without prisons and to build an abolitionist movement.

'During the late sixties, working within movements to free political prisoners, members of the Black Panther Party, we became aware of larger structural issues. Political repression was not only directed at political prisoners. Rather, the prison system as a whole served as an apparatus of racist and political repression, fixing its sights not only on those who were incarcerated for unambiguously political reasons, but on the majority of the incarcerated population. The fact that everyone behind bars was (and is) poor and that a disproportionate number of them were black and Latino led us to think about the more comprehensive impact of punishment on communities of colour and poor communities in general. How many rich people are in prison? Perhaps a few here and there, but the vast majority of prisoners are poor people. A disproportionate number of those poor people were and continue to be people of colour, people of African descent, Latinos and Native Americans.'

(Colorado 1997)

'Why do we in this country find it so difficult to imagine a society in which prisons are not such a prominent feature of the geographical and social landscape? Our impoverished popular imagination is responsible for the lack of or sparsity of conversations on minimizing prisons and decarceration as opposed to incarceration. Particularly since resources that could fund services designed to to help prevent people from engaging in the behavior that leads to prison are being used instead to build and operate prisons. Precisely the resources we need in order to prevent people from going to prison are being devoured by the prison system. This means that prison reproduces the conditions of its own expansion, creating a syndrome of self-perpetuation.'

(University of Wisconsin 1999)

'One of the really bizarre aspects of the prison system is the way it so easily assimilates “prison reforms” into processes that strengthen it and render it even more repressive than before the reforms were instituted. This is why I always try to disassociate myself and other prison abolitionists from prison reform. Obviously it is important to make life better for people who are in prison. We support reforms that will make life more livable for prisoners, while we call for the abolition of prisons as the default solution for the social problems that prison presumes to solve but cannot.'

(Denver, Colorado 2002)

Extracts from 'The Meaning of freedom' 2012 Angela Davis

Particularly since the escalation of neoliberal policies and privatisation of great swathes of the 'prison industrial complex' in countries around the world, it has become more obviously apparent that globalised capital is cashing in not only on the outsourcing of manufacturing but at the same time cashing in on imprisoning large sections of surplus populations impoverished by the policies of the transnational corporations.