Description
Edited by the Critical Resistance Publications Collective. 240 pp., paper. ISBN: 978-0-935206-03-6. $14.95
This special issue of Social Justice, edited by Critical Resistance, focuses on prison abolition as a goal and theme. The issue is broadly divided into system analyses and articles centering on organizing for change, that is, reports of struggles against the system and toward the realization of new visions. The first part deals with the politics of prisons and crime, as well as the interplay between immigration, militarization of the border, and the social control of Native populations. The second part examines the elements of public safety and well-being. It also includes discussions on the role of conferences in building movements and the prospects for prison abolition today. The final section offers resources in the form of selected videos, films, and pertinent web sites.
We are pleased to offer a combination of theoretically cogent articles and activist-inspired proposals for moving forward. It is a timely contribution considering public recognition of the bankruptcy of the War on Drugs as a central feature of the national crime policy, the movement away from the use of the death penalty, and the clear need to reappraise the prison-building boom in a period of constantly declining crime rates. The question is how such illogical and destructive policies could be sustained for so long; organizing is the answer, the path to its undoing.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Issue Overview, Guest Editors
The History of Critical Resistance, Guest Editors
I. THE POLITICS OF PRISONS
Reflections on Crime and Class, Ed Mead
The Cultural Commodification of Prisons, Paul Wright
The Industry of Fear, Mumia Abu-Jamal
Prisons, Social Control, and Political Prisoners, Marilyn Buck
Urban Pedagogies and the Celling of Adolescents of Color, Garrett Albert Duncan
Crime as Social Control, Christian Parenti
Prison Psychosis, M. Grayson L. Taylor, introduction by Terry Kupers
II. NATIVE POPULATIONS: CONFRONTING THE INS AND RESERVATION POLITICS
Opening Up Borderland Studies: A Review of U.S.-Mexico Border Militarization Discourse, Jose Palafox
The Role of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Prison-Industrial Complex, Michael Welch
Political Surveillance, State Repression, and Class Resistance: The Puerto Rican Experience, René Francisco Poitevin
Policing the Rez: Keeping No Peace in Indian Country, Dian Million
III. ORGANIZING FOR CHANGE
Maximum Security, Margo Okazawa-Rey and Gwyn Kirk
Transatlantic Visions: Resisting the Globalization of Mass Incarceration, Julia Sudbury
Yell Real Loud: HIV-Positive Women Prisoners Challenge Constructions of Justice, Cynthia Chandler and Carol Kingery
IV. THE ROLE OF CONFERENCES IN BUILDING MOVEMENTS
Reflections on Inside/Out Organizing, Karlene Faith
Women Prisoners on the Cutting Edge: Development of the Activist Women Prisoners’ Rights Movement, Ellen Barry
American Radical Traditions in Conference Organizing, Marge Frantz, interviewed by Cassandra Shaylor
Reflections on Critical Resistance, Bo Brown, Terry Kupers, Andy Smith, and Julia Sudbury, as interviewed by Dylan Rodriguez and Nancy Stoller
V. ABOLITION TODAY
Slavery and Prison Understanding the Connections, Kim Gilmore
This Is an Illogical Statement: Dangerous Trends in Anti-Prison Activism, Camille E.S.A. Acey
The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A Conversation, A dialog between Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez
VI. RESOURCES
Selected Documentaries
Recommended Websites
