9 Books to Read After Just Mercy and Are Prisons Obsolete?
[image description: a woman at a protest holding a sign that says “book bags, not body bags.”]
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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the prison industrial complex. There have been a string of peaceful protestors being arrested in Columbus, Ohio (where I live) who were protesting racial inequity and injustice (including unarmed black men being murdered by police who received little or no punishment for the murder) when they were arrested. Learn more about their organizing initiatives, sign their petition, and donate to the cause here.
Prison abolition and reform are such massive topics, but I started thinking… What if fewer people were sent to prison in the first place? What if there were alternatives so people didn’t feel the need to call the cops like they’re calling customer service?
So I did what I always do when there’s something I want to learn more about: read.
I bought a copy of Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis, which I was excited about because Angela Davis is a civil rights icon and the book is only 120 or so pages, so it seemed more accessible than a textbook on the topic.
It was extremely informative and is an excellent primer on why prisons are deadly, ineffective, terrible for rehabilitation, and have been turned into centers for profit generation, which only incentivizes police to arrest and imprison more and more people.
My only complaint with the book is that it ended before it really discussed practical solutions about what we can do to fight this. So, I had more reading to do.
The only problem was, I didn’t know where to begin. Even an ardent book nerd needs to ask for recommendations sometimes, so I reached out to my favorite social justice bookseller, Charlie Pugsley of BookSpace Columbus (buy books from him!) and the librarians at the Columbus Metropolitan Library. They hooked me up with a bunch of excellent recommendations, which I wanted to pass on to you.
Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, edited by Ejeris Dixon, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Afraid to call 911 but not sure what to do instead? Transformative justice and other community-based approaches to violence have existed for centuries, yet are often under the radar and marginalized. This is How We Survive focuses on concrete alternatives to policing and prisons. From practical tool-kits and personal essays, to supporting people in mental health crises, to community-based murder investigations, this text delves deeply into the “how to” of transformative justice. Along the way, this volume documents the history of this radical movement, creating space for long time organizers to reflect on victories, struggles, mistakes, and transformations.
Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture by Nora Samaran
Synopsis from Goodreads:
“Violence is nurturance turned backwards,” writes Nora Samaran. In Turn This World Inside Out, she presents Nurturance Culture as the opposite of rape culture and suggests how alternative models of care and accountability―different from “call-outs,” which are often rooted in the politics of shame and guilt―can move toward inverting cultures of dominance and systems of oppression. When communities are able to recognize and speak up about systemic violence, center the needs of those harmed, and hold a circle of belonging that humanizes everyone, they create a revolutionary foundation of nurturance that can begin to repair the harms inflicted by patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Emerging out of insights in Gender Studies, Race Theory, and Psychology, and influenced by contemporary social movements, Turn This World Inside Out speaks to some of the most pressing issues of our time.
Abolishing Carceral Society by the Abolition Collective
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics is a collectively run project supporting radical scholarly and activist research, publishing and disseminating work that encourages us to make the impossible possible, to seek transformation well beyond policy changes and toward revolutionary abolitionism. The journal publishes work that engage with the meaning, practices, and politics of abolitionism in a range of historical and geographical context.
Our inaugural issue articulates a wide interpretation of abolitionism, including: prison and police abolitionism, decolonization, slavery abolitionism, anti-statism, anti-racism, labor organizing, anti-capitalism, radical feminism, queer and trans* politics, Indigenous people’s politics, sex worker organizing, migrant activism, social ecology, animal rights and liberation, and radical pedagogy. Recognizing that the best movement-relevant intellectual work is happening both in the movements themselves and in the communities with whom they organize, the journal aims to support activists, artists, and scholars whose work amplifies such grassroots activity. Abolition features a range of formats and approaches from scholarly essays, art, poetry, multi-media, interviews, field notes, to documentary sketches each presented in an accessible manner.
Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time by James Kilgore
Synopsis from Goodreads:
We all know that orange is the new black and mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow, but how much do we actually know about the structure, goals, and impact of our criminal justice system? Understanding Mass Incarceration offers the first comprehensive overview of the incarceration apparatus put in place by the world’s largest jailer: the United States.
Drawing on a growing body of academic and professional work, Understanding Mass Incarceration describes in plain English the many competing theories of criminal justice—from rehabilitation to retribution, from restorative justice to justice reinvestment. In a lively and accessible style, author James Kilgore illuminates the difference between prisons and jails, probation and parole, laying out key concepts and policies such as the War on Drugs, broken windows policing, three-strikes sentencing, the school-to-prison pipeline, recidivism, and prison privatization. Informed by the crucial lenses of race and gender, he addresses issues typically omitted from the discussion: the rapidly increasing incarceration of women, Latinos, and transgender people; the growing imprisonment of immigrants; and the devastating impact of mass incarceration on communities.
Both field guide and primer, Understanding Mass Incarceration will be an essential resource for those engaged in criminal justice activism as well as those new to the subject.
Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better by Maya Schenwar
Synopsis from Goodreads:
In Locked Down, Locked Out, award-winning journalist Maya Schenwar looks at how prison tears families and communities apart, creating a rippling effect that touches every corner of our society. Through the stories of prisoners and their families, as well as her own family's experience of her sister's incarceration, Schenwar shows how the institution that locks up 2.3 million Americans and decimates poor communities of color is shredding the ties that, if nurtured, could foster real collective safety. The destruction does not end upon exiting the prison walls: the 95 percent of prisoners who are released emerge with even fewer economic opportunities and fewer human connections on the outside than before. Locked Down, Locked Out shows how incarceration takes away the very things that might enable people to build better lives. Looking toward a future beyond imprisonment, Schenwar profiles community-based initiatives that foster antiracist, anticlassist, prohumanity approaches to justice. These programs successfully deal with problems both individual harm and larger social wrongs through connection rather than isolation, moving toward a safer future for all of us."
Making It Right: Building Peace, Settling Conflict by Marilee Peters
Synopsis from Goodreads:
What if there were no prisons? Alternative approaches to dealing with crime are underway around the world to explore how victims, offenders, and communities can heal rifts and repair damage. It’s often called restorative justice. It’s a way to think about the deeper reasons behind crimes, and suggests that by building more caring communities, it’s possible to change our societies—and ourselves.
Making It Right relates true stories of young people who are working in innovative ways to further peaceful resolution of conflict and to heal past wounds. The book begins with individual injustices, such as bullying, and works up to collective ones, like wars. Each chapter begins with a dramatic fictional account, making the topic engaging and relevant for kids.
Restorative justice isn’t going to change the world overnight, nor will it end all crime or prevent all wars. But it’s a powerful way to get teens thinking about how they can participate in building a more peaceful society.
Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair by Danielle Sered
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Although over half the people incarcerated in America today have committed violent offenses, the focus of reformers has been almost entirely on nonviolent and drug offenses. Danielle Sered’s brilliant and groundbreaking Until We Reckon steers directly and unapologetically into the question of violence, offering approaches that will help end mass incarceration and increase safety.
Widely recognized as one of the leading proponents of a restorative approach to violent crime, Sered asks us to reconsider the purposes of incarceration and argues persuasively that the needs of survivors of violent crime are better met by asking people who commit violence to accept responsibility for their actions and make amends in ways that are meaningful to those they have hurt—none of which happens in the context of a criminal trial or a prison sentence.
Sered launched and directs Common Justice, one of the few organizations offering alternatives to incarceration for people who commit serious violent crime and which has produced immensely promising results.
Critically, Sered argues that the reckoning owed is not only on the part of those who have committed violence, but also by our nation’s overreliance on incarceration to produce safety—at great cost to communities, survivors, racial equity, and the very fabric of our democracy.
The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or in combination. The core of the problem must be addressed: the nature of modern policing itself.
This book attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. It shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice— even public safety. Drawing on groundbreaking research from across the world, and covering virtually every area in the increasingly broad range of police work, Alex Vitale demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.
In contrast, there are places where the robust implementation of policing alternatives—such as legalization, restorative justice, and harm reduction—has led to a decrease in crime, spending, and injustice. The best solution to bad policing may be an end to policing.
Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States, edited by by Maya Schenwar, Joe Macaré, and Alana Yu-Lan Price
Synopsis from Goodreads:
What is the reality of policing in the United States? Do the police keep anyone safe and secure other than the very wealthy? How do recent police killings of young black people in the United States fit into the historical and global context of anti-blackness?
This collection of reports and essays (the first collaboration between Truthout and Haymarket Books) explores police violence against black, brown, indigenous and other marginalized communities, miscarriages of justice, and failures of token accountability and reform measures. It also makes a compelling and provocative argument against calling the police.
Contributions cover a broad range of issues including the killing by police of black men and women, police violence against Latino and indigenous communities, law enforcement's treatment of pregnant people and those with mental illness, and the impact of racist police violence on parenting, as well as specific stories such as a Detroit police conspiracy to slap murder convictions on young black men using police informant and the failure of Chicago's much-touted Independent Police Review Authority, the body supposedly responsible for investigating police misconduct. The title Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? is no mere provocation: the book also explores alternatives for keeping communities safe.
Is there a topic you’re super into researching right now? Tell me in the comments below!
