Michael: The United States has less than 5% of the world's population, but it holds over 20% of the world's prisoners. Kevin: Whoa, hold on. Say that again. Twenty percent? Michael: Twenty percent. That's not a policy failure; it's a business model. And today, we're going to look at the receipts. Kevin: That is an absolutely staggering statistic. It sounds like something out of a dystopian novel, not a government report. Michael: It’s the perfect entry point for a book that's both incredibly influential and, for many, deeply unsettling: Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis. Kevin: Angela Davis. I mean, she's a legend. But she's not just an academic writing from an ivory tower, right? She was actually a political prisoner herself in the 70s, faced capital charges, and was eventually acquitted after a massive international campaign. That has to bring a whole different level of insight to this. Michael: Exactly. This isn't just theory for her; it's lived experience. Her own sixteen months in jail, fighting for her life, shaped this entire critique. And she uses that unique perspective to ask a question most of us are too afraid to even consider. Kevin: Which is, are prisons themselves the problem? Not just how we run them, but the very idea of them. Michael: Precisely. She argues that we treat prisons as this inevitable, permanent feature of society, like death or taxes. But her first big point is that this is a huge illusion.

Kevin: An illusion? That feels like a stretch. I mean, haven't we always had prisons? It seems like a pretty basic societal function: people do bad things, they get locked up. Michael: That’s what we all think! But Davis points out that the prison as our primary form of punishment is a surprisingly recent invention. For most of human history, punishment was something else entirely. It was a public spectacle. Kevin: What do you mean, like stocks in the town square? Michael: Think much, much more brutal. Davis brings up the work of Michel Foucault, who describes the execution of a man named Damiens in Paris in 1757. He had tried to assassinate the king, and his punishment was designed to be a terrifying public display of power. Kevin: I’m almost afraid to ask, but what did they do? Michael: They used red-hot pincers to tear flesh from his body. They poured molten lead and boiling oil into his wounds. Then, they tied his limbs to four horses and tried to pull him apart. When that didn't work, they had to use knives to sever his joints before the horses could finish the job. And this was all done in a public square, for everyone to see. Kevin: Oh my god. That is… beyond horrifying. It's pure medieval torture. Michael: Exactly. And against that backdrop, the early reformers—people in the Enlightenment era—came up with a new idea. They said, "This is barbaric. A civilized society shouldn't do this." They argued that individuals have rights, and the ultimate punishment should be the deprivation of those rights, specifically liberty. So, they proposed locking people away in penitentiaries. Kevin: So the prison was actually born as a humane reform? Michael: That’s the great irony. The penitentiary was seen as a progressive, enlightened alternative to public torture. The goal wasn't just to punish, but to give the prisoner time for "penitence," for quiet reflection to reform their soul. Kevin: Okay, that history is fascinating. But it doesn't change the fact that now, in the 21st century, they feel necessary. I'm still stuck on the basic question: if not prisons, then what? What do you do with violent criminals? Just let them roam free? It sounds completely unrealistic. Michael: And that's the exact trap Davis says we're in. Your question is the question everyone asks, and she argues that our very inability to imagine an answer is the core of the problem. We've been so conditioned to see prisons as the only solution that we've stopped looking for other ones. Kevin: Our imagination has been… incarcerated. Michael: That's a great way to put it. She tells a personal story. When she was an activist in the late 1960s, the total US prison population was around 200,000. She says if someone had told her then that in thirty years it would be two million, she would have thought it was impossible. She would have assumed that such a massive increase could only happen if the country had descended into fascism, and that people would be rising up in the streets to stop it. Kevin: But they didn't. It happened, and it became normal. Michael: It happened. And the reason it happened, she argues, has very little to do with a massive spike in crime. It has everything to do with the fact that punishment became an industry.

Kevin: Okay, this brings us to that term you hear a lot, the "Prison Industrial Complex." It sounds big and ominous. Can you break that down for me? What does it actually mean in simple terms? Michael: At its core, it's a web of overlapping interests between government, corporations, and the media that all benefit from increased incarceration. The key insight is that this system creates a demand for prisoners that is independent of the actual crime rate. It needs "raw material" to function. Kevin: Raw material being… human bodies. Michael: Human bodies. It’s like a self-licking ice cream cone. The system profits from social problems, which in turn creates more social problems, which then feeds the system. For example, data shows that from 1990 to 1998, homicide rates in the U.S. dropped by half. Kevin: Okay, so crime was going down. Michael: Dramatically. But during that same period, homicide stories on the three major TV networks went up almost fourfold. The public felt like crime was out of control, so they supported "tough on crime" policies that sent more people to prison, even as society was getting safer. The prison population exploded. Kevin: So it's a feedback loop of fear. But who's actually getting rich? Give me some examples. Michael: This is where it gets really wild. Davis points to the end of the Cold War in the early 90s. Defense contractors were panicking. Their military contracts were drying up. So what did they do? They pivoted. A 1994 Wall Street Journal article was literally titled "Making Crime Pay." Kevin: Seriously? Michael: Companies like Westinghouse and Alliant Techsystems, who made military hardware, created new divisions to retool their defense technology for "America's streets." They started selling surveillance gear, non-lethal weapons, and advanced police tech to local law enforcement. The "War on Drugs" became their new Cold War. Kevin: Wow. So the line between soldier and police officer starts to blur, technologically speaking. But that’s just the tech side. What about inside the prisons? Michael: That's where it gets even more direct. We're not just talking about private prison companies like CCA or Wackenhut, though they are a big part of it. We're talking about all the companies that supply the massive public prison system. Dial Soap sold $100,000 worth of soap to New York City jails in a single year. AT&T and Verizon make fortunes on exorbitant prisoner phone calls. But the most disturbing example Davis gives goes back a bit further. It’s the story of a dermatologist named Dr. Albert Kligman. Kevin: Okay… where is this going? Michael: In the 1950s and 60s, Kligman was doing research for big pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies. He needed human subjects, and he found the perfect place: Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. He later recalled his first impression of the prison. He said, "All I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time." Kevin: Oh, man. 'Acres of skin.' That is one of the most chilling things I've ever heard. Michael: He saw the prisoners not as people, but as a perfectly controlled "anthropoid colony" for medical research. He conducted hundreds of experiments on them, testing products for giants like Johnson & Johnson and Dow Chemical. He exposed them to chemicals, viruses, and all sorts of substances, sometimes with horrific results. Kevin: This is real? This actually happened in the United States? Michael: It's fully documented. And it perfectly illustrates the core logic of the Prison Industrial Complex: the dehumanization of a captive population for profit. It shows how deep these corporate ties run. It’s not just about building prisons; it’s about profiting from every aspect of the people inside them. Kevin: So even if you got rid of all private prisons tomorrow, this larger complex would still exist because of all the suppliers and contractors feeding the public system. Michael: Exactly. The problem is much, much bigger. And it's structured in ways we don't even see. Which brings us to a part of the story that is almost always ignored. When we picture a prisoner, or one of those men in Holmesburg, we almost always picture a man. Davis argues that's a huge blind spot.

Kevin: Right. The default image of a 'prisoner' is male. But women are the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, aren't they? Michael: They are. And Davis's argument is that gender doesn't just affect women's prisons; it fundamentally structures the entire system of punishment, for both men and women. But the way it plays out for women is particularly insidious. Kevin: How so? Are the conditions just worse? Michael: It's not just about being 'worse,' it's about being different. The system is built on historical ideas about 'feminine criminality.' Deviant men were seen as criminals, but deviant women were often seen as 'insane' or morally fallen. So their punishment has always been tied up with controlling their bodies and minds in a very specific way. For example, women in prison are far more likely to be put on heavy psychotropic drugs, not for therapy, but for control. Kevin: So it's a form of chemical restraint. Michael: A chemical restraint that carries the historical echo of the asylum. But the most mind-bending example of how gender logic works in this system is the story of a warden named Tekla Miller in Michigan. She considered herself a feminist fighting for 'gender equality' in the prison system. Kevin: Okay, that sounds good on the surface. Better programs, better facilities for women? Michael: You would think. But her idea of equality was to make the women's prison just as repressive as the men's. She saw that the men's prisons had huge arsenals, while the women's prison had a small closet of weapons. So she campaigned to get more guns for the women's facility. Kevin: Wait. Her feminist demand was for… more weapons to be pointed at women? Michael: It gets worse. After a female prisoner tried to escape by climbing a fence, Miller was outraged that the guards weren't instructed to shoot at her. She argued that since guards were allowed to shoot at escaping male prisoners, for the sake of equality, they should be allowed to shoot at escaping female prisoners, too. And she won. The policy was changed. Kevin: That is completely twisted. That's using the language of equality to justify more violence. It's like a parody of feminism. Michael: It's a perfect, if bizarre, example of her point: when the male prison is the unquestioned 'norm' for punishment, 'equality' can mean dragging women down to that same level of brutality, rather than questioning the brutality itself. And this violence isn't just about policy; it's deeply personal and often sexual. Kevin: You're talking about abuse from guards. Michael: Yes, which is rampant. But Davis points to something even more systemic. She tells the story of an activist group in Australia at a conference for correctional personnel. In the middle of the conference, a group of women got on stage and performed a dramatization of a routine strip search. Kevin: In front of the prison guards? How did they react? Michael: They were repulsed. Horrified. Many of them insisted, "That's not what we do." Some of the guards reportedly started crying. Because when they saw the act performed outside the context of the prison, stripped of the uniform and the state's authority, they realized what it was. Kevin: What was it? Michael: As one of the activists put it, they realized that "without the uniform, without the power of the state, it would be sexual assault." Kevin: Wow. So the only thing separating a 'lawful procedure' from a felony crime is the context and the uniform. That is an incredibly powerful point. It's not just a few bad apples; the abuse is baked into the very procedures of the system. Michael: It's institutionalized. And that's the thread that runs through this entire book.

Michael: So when you put it all together, you have an institution we think is natural but is actually a recent invention. You have a massive economic engine that needs a constant supply of bodies to function, regardless of crime. And you have a system of hidden, gendered violence that's built into its very procedures. Kevin: It’s a bleak picture. It makes the whole system feel less like a system of justice and more like a system of social and economic control. Michael: That's exactly Davis's conclusion. She uses this powerful metaphor, calling the prison a 'black hole.' It's become the place where we deposit all of our most difficult social problems—racism, poverty, deindustrialization, mental illness, lack of education. We throw people into this hole so that we, as a society, are relieved of the responsibility of actually dealing with the root causes. Kevin: We're not solving the problems, we're just disappearing the people who have them. And it really forces you to ask, what are we trying to achieve with punishment? Are we seeking justice? Or are we just seeking control? Because it seems like we've built a multi-trillion-dollar system dedicated to control. Michael: Exactly. And that's the fundamental question Davis leaves us with. Her call for abolition isn't just about tearing down buildings. It's about asking what we would have to build in their place: better schools, universal healthcare, robust mental health services, living wages. It's about building a society that doesn't need a black hole to dump its problems in. Kevin: It's a huge, daunting question. But after hearing all this, it feels like one we can't afford to ignore anymore. Michael: It's a tough one, for sure, and we'd love to know what you all think. Drop a comment on our socials—what does a world without prisons even look like to you? It’s a conversation worth having. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.