Angela Davis,
“Prison Reform or Prison Abolition?”
First, you’ll read Chapter One of Angela Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete?, “Prison Reform or Prison Abolition?” Angela Davis is a Black feminist scholar whose work is dedicated to prison abolition and civil rights. Born in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama, learning how to resist white supremacist violence was part of Davis’s upbringing. After studying philosophy in Germany at the Frankfurt school, Davis became active in the Black Panthers. In 1970, Davis was wrongfully imprisoned for 18 months when four people were killed with a gun Davis had purchased legally. Her wrongful imprisonment drew even more attention to her cause. In the introduction to Are Prisons Obsolete?, Davis asks why prisons are taken for granted.
As you read:
- Reflect on how prisons are taken for granted in Canada. Have you ever questioned whether prisons are necessary or good?
- Remember that the political and economic context of prison growth is different in Canada than the U.S. In Canada, prisons are publicly funded. Keeping one incarcerated person in federal prison costs approximately $115,000 per year — almost triple the cost of tuition at Harvard, according to the John Howard Society. Thus, profit does not explain prison expansion in the Canadian context.
- Identify two reasons Davis argues prisons are taken for granted, and think of examples of your own.
You can access the book here.
Lucas Crawford and Robert Nichols,
“Rethinking Hate Crimes: The Hard Work of Creating Social Equity”
In this short essay from Beyond the Queer Alphabet, Lucas Crawford and Robert Nichols challenge the notion that hate crimes legislation protects queer, trans, racialized, and Indigenous people from violence. They explain that the criminalization of ‘hate’ simultaneously obscures and depends upon ongoing structures of oppression. That is, charging someone with a hate crime requires that the offender articulate a clear expression of racism, homophobia, transphobia, or misogyny, identifying crimes in the name of ‘hatred’ as different from ‘normal’ or ‘regular’ violence. As Nichols and Crawford explain, however, ‘normal’ violence cannot be so easily separated from violence in the name of hatred. They argue that hate crimes legislation, which results in longer sentences for those convicted, is not a form of protection for marginalized groups, but empower the criminal justice system, which polices and incarcerates Black, Indigenous, and queer people disproportionately.
As you read:
- Identify their argument and try to put it into your own words. How would you explain the problem with hate crimes legislation to your roommate, your mom, or your cat?
- Pay attention to whether or not Nichols and Crawford think hate crimes legislation reduces instances of hate-fuelled violence
- Explain why Nichols and Crawford want us to “look beyond prisons for justice”
You can access the book here.