Narrator: Imagine a world without prisons. For most, the idea is unthinkable, a recipe for chaos. We see prisons as a fixed, non-negotiable part of our social landscape, as natural and permanent as schools or hospitals. But what if this assumption is wrong? What if the prison system is not a solution to crime, but a deeply flawed institution that perpetuates the very problems it claims to solve? What if, like slavery or segregation, it is an institution that we should be working to make obsolete?

This is the central, provocative question at the heart of Angela Y. Davis's seminal work, Are Prisons Obsolete?. In this concise and powerful book, Davis dismantles the "common sense" idea that we need prisons. She argues that the explosive growth of incarceration, particularly in the United States, is not a response to rising crime but the result of a political and economic system built on racism and profit. The book serves as a guide to understanding how this system was built, how it functions, and how we might begin to imagine a more just and humane world without it.

Narrator: One of the greatest obstacles to rethinking the prison system is its perceived permanence. Davis argues that prisons have become so ingrained in our collective consciousness that we can scarcely imagine life without them. This wasn't always the case. She recalls her own activism in the late 1960s, when the U.S. prison population was around 200,000. If someone had told her then that it would swell to over two million in just three decades, she would have found it unbelievable, assuming such a drastic expansion could only happen under a fascist regime and would be met with massive public resistance.

Yet, it happened without that resistance. How? Davis points to the powerful role of media. Our understanding of prisons is often shaped not by reality, but by a constant stream of images from Hollywood films and television shows. This creates a sense of familiarity that allows us to take prisons for granted while simultaneously obscuring the brutal realities inside. In a telling anecdote, Davis recounts her surprise while interviewing women in Cuban prisons. She found that their primary knowledge of what a prison was like came from watching American movies. This global reach of prison imagery reinforces its status as a natural, unquestionable part of society, making the very idea of abolition seem radical and unrealistic.

Narrator: The prison as we know it is a relatively modern invention, and ironically, it was born from a movement for reform. Before the late 18th century, punishment was a public spectacle of physical torture. To illustrate this, Davis invokes the gruesome 1757 execution of Robert-François Damiens in Paris, who was publicly torn apart for attempting to assassinate the king. Reformers of the Enlightenment era, horrified by such brutality, proposed incarceration as a more humane alternative.

The new penitentiaries, like Philadelphia’s Eastern State, were designed to inspire penitence through isolation and labor. But the system’s flaws were apparent from the start. In 1842, the author Charles Dickens visited Eastern State and was appalled. He argued that the "slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain" caused by total solitary confinement was a form of psychological torture far worse than any physical pain. He saw that this supposedly humane reform was creating deep, invisible wounds. Davis argues that this dark legacy continues today in modern super-maximum security prisons, which use technology to enforce an even more extreme isolation, but have abandoned any pretense of rehabilitation.

Narrator: In the 1980s, the U.S. prison population began to skyrocket, even as official crime rates were falling. Davis argues this was not a coincidence. It marked the rise of what she and other activists term the "prison industrial complex." This is a powerful web of interests connecting corporations, government, and the media, all of whom profit from the expansion of the carceral state.

A stark example of this emerged after the Cold War. As military spending declined, major defense contractors like Westinghouse and Alliant Techsystems needed new markets. They found one in "crime fighting." A 1994 Wall Street Journal article revealed how these companies began retooling military technology for domestic police forces, creating everything from advanced surveillance systems to non-lethal weapons. The "War on Drugs" became a new, profitable war fought on American streets. This profit motive extends far beyond weapons. Corporations like AT&T, Dial Soap, and Victoria's Secret have all profited from prison contracts or prison labor. This deep corporate investment creates a powerful incentive to keep prisons full, regardless of whether it actually makes society safer.

Narrator: The prison system is not a neutral institution; it is fundamentally structured by gender and race. Davis argues that to ignore the unique experiences of women in prison is to miss the bigger picture. Historically, "deviant" women were not simply seen as criminal, but as insane or morally fallen, and their punishment was designed to enforce domesticity.

This gendered logic produces perverse outcomes today. Davis tells the story of Tekla Miller, a warden in the 1980s who considered herself a feminist fighting for "gender equality." Her solution was to make women's prisons more like men's. She successfully lobbied for a policy allowing guards to shoot at female escapees, just as they did with men, and fought to have a female graduate wear shackles at her university commencement because male prisoners were not afforded the same privilege. This bizarre quest for "equality" only led to more repression. Furthermore, Davis exposes how sexual abuse is an institutionalized part of punishment for women, from humiliating strip searches that amount to sexual assault to the widespread use of psychotropic drugs for control. This violence is deeply racialized, building on historical stereotypes that disproportionately target women of color.

Narrator: When faced with the idea of abolition, the first question is always: "But what would we do with all the dangerous people?" Davis argues this is the wrong question. It assumes the current system works and that we simply need a one-to-one replacement. Instead, she calls for a process of "decarceration" and the creation of a "constellation of alternatives."

This means addressing the root causes that lead people to prison in the first place. It involves demilitarizing schools and reinvesting in education. It means creating universal healthcare, including mental health services, and decriminalizing drug use and sex work. It means developing community-based restorative justice programs that focus on repairing harm rather than on retribution. A poignant example of the system's failure to rehabilitate is the story of the Greenhaven Prison college program. This highly successful initiative, which allowed incarcerated men to earn degrees, was shut down after the 1994 Crime Bill eliminated Pell Grants for prisoners. As one prisoner clerk lamented while the library was being dismantled, "what’s the use of building your body if you can’t build your mind?" The system chose punishment over transformation. For Davis, abolition is the long, difficult work of building a society that consistently chooses transformation.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Are Prisons Obsolete? is that mass incarceration is a political choice, not an inevitability. Angela Y. Davis portrays the prison not as a solution for social problems, but as a "black hole" where society deposits human beings to avoid confronting its deepest failings: systemic racism, economic inequality, and a reliance on punishment over healing.

The book's ultimate challenge is not simply to critique, but to imagine. It forces us to ask what our world would look like if we invested the billions of dollars spent on caging people into education, healthcare, housing, and mental health services instead. The work of abolition, as Davis presents it, is not about finding a single, perfect replacement for the prison. It is about beginning the difficult, creative, and necessary work of building a society that no longer needs one.