NatalieCrouch.pptx

Angela Davis:
A Trailblazer for African-American Rights & Prison Abolition
Natalie K. Crouch
ITGS 400- Spring 2021

1

BACKGROUND
“The United States incarcerates more people than any other country, with 2.2 million adults in prisons or jails at the end of 2016. Nearly 60,000 children under the age of 18 are also incarcerated in juvenile jails or prisons, and about 10,000 more children are held in adult jails or prisons” (Sultan, 2020, para. 4).

BACKGROUND (CONT.)
Black and Hispanic Americans are incarcerated at higher rates than white Americans, despite white people making up the majority of American citizens. According to Gramlich (2020), “…black Americans remain far more likely than their Hispanic and white counterparts to be in prison. The black imprisonment rate at the end of 2018 was nearly twice the rate among Hispanics (797 per 100,000) and more than five times the rate among whites (268 per 100,000)” (para. 4).

BACKGROUND (CONT.)
While sitting in a jail cell in Marin County, CA in 1972, Angela Davis made the following statement: “When someone asks me about violence, huh… I just… I just find it incredible. Because, what it means is that the person who is asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through in this country, what black people have experienced in this country, since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa” (Olsson, 2011, 0:08:05).

RATIONALE
As mentioned previously, the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country on Earth, with Black and Brown individuals being incarcerated at disproportionate rates compared to white individuals (Gramlich, 2020).
In a study of 401,288 prisoners, “An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years” (National Institute on Justice, 2019, para.1), suggesting that prison does not seem effective in reforming misbehavior.

THESIS STATEMENT
Dr. Angela Y. Davis is a pioneer in the prison abolition movement within the United States and continues to push for human rights for oppressed groups, specifically people of color and women.

AIM
This literature review aims to explore different perspectives on the prison abolition movement, Dr. Angela Davis’ role in this movement, and how the prison industrial complex disproportionally harms people of color in the United States.

MAIN POINTS
In this literature review, the issue of the prison industrial complex and other prejudiced criminal justice practices in the United States will be explored in three distinct parts:
The War on Drugs and the prison industrial complex: Rooted in systemic racism.
The role of Angela Davis in prison abolition and race relations in the 1970’s.
Is prison abolition the solution to the prison industrial complex?

THE WAR ON DRUGS
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs”, increasing funding and presence of federal drug enforcement agencies to further criminalize the use, sale, and distribution of illicit psychoactive drugs (Drug Policy Alliance, 2021).

“This ‘war on drugs’, which all subsequent presidents have embraced, has created a behemoth of courts, jails, and prisons that have done little to decrease the use of drugs while doing much to create confusion and hardship in families of color and urban communities” (Moore & Elkavich, 2008, p. 782).

THE WAR ON DRUGS
In a 1994 interview for Harper’s Magazine, former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman made the following statement:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did” (Baum, 2016, para. 2).

THE WAR ON DRUGS
As of 2008, black and white Americans use drugs at nearly identical rates, being 7.4% and 7.2% of the U.S. population, respectively (Moore & Elkavich, 2008, p.783).

More than 60% of the American prison population consists of Black men and “Nationwide, the rate of persons admitted to prison on drug charges for Black men is 13 times that for White men, and in 10 states, the rates are 26 to 57 times those for White men” (Moore & Elkavich, 2008, p. 784).

PRISON ABOLITION & ANGELA DAVIS
The abolition of the prison industrial complex can be understood as a “…political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment” (Critical Resistance, 2021, para. 3).

While Davis was imprisoned for 18 months between 1970 and 1972, “…a major international movement to free her began. Davis used this movement as a platform to expose the blatant abuses and the purposeful failings of the corrections system. Her writings and public appearances raised awareness about the harsh realities of prison and gave a voice to the voiceless incarcerated women and minorities across the country” (Shaw, 2009, pp. 102-103).

PRISON ABOLTION & ANGELA DAVIS
In 1997, Angela Davis co-founded Critical Resistance, a prison abolition organization which “… remains at the forefront of the movement to challenge and change these widely held beliefs… In continuing the work that Davis and her co‐founders began, this organization holds conferences to build awareness and support for prison abolition and actively works to change public policy” (Shaw, 2009, p. 103).

IS PRISON ABOLITION THE ANSWER?
According to a national poll conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union (2017), “91 percent of Americans say that the criminal justice system has problems that need fixing”(para. 3) and “71 percent of Americans agree that incarceration is often counterproductive to public safety” (para. 3)

IS PRISON ABOLITION THE ANSWER?
A popular and less extreme alternative to prison abolition is prison reform, which aims to re-structure or modify existing penal systems rather than abolish penal systems entirely. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime (2021), the prison reform movement focuses on improving the following aspects of carceral systems:
Pre-trial detention
Prison management
Alternative measures & sanctions
Social reintegration

IS PRISON ABOLITION THE ANSWER?
While not opposed to prison reform, Dr. Angela Davis has criticized the prison reform movement, stating that prison reform has historically “…created a situation in which progress in prison reform has tended to render the prison more impermeable to change and has resulted in bigger, and what are considered ‘better’ prisons” (Davis & Rodriguez, 2000, p. 216).

It has been argued that prisons cannot be reformed and must be abolished “…since the very nature of prisons requires brutality and contempt for the people imprisoned” (Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976, Ch. 1). The Prison Research Education Action Project (1976) also argues that “…we must enable all convicted persons to escape the poverty which is the root cause of the crimes the average person fears most: crimes such as robbery, burglary, mugging or rape” (Ch.1).

IS PRISON ABOLITION THE ANSWER?
In order for prison abolition to be possible, Angela Davis (2000) points out several changes that must occur beforehand:
“…be able to talk about the many ways in which punishment is linked to poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other modes of dominance
In universities, …the emergence of the interdisciplinary field of prison studies… and at the high school level, new curricula can also be developed that encourage critical thinking about the role of punishment
Community organizations can also play a role in urging people to link their demands for better schools, for example, to a reduction of prison spending” (p. 217).

CONCLUSION
The United States prison industrial complex incarcerates more of its citizens per capita than any other country in the world, with Black and Brown individuals making up a disproportionate amount of those incarcerated as a result of the “War on Drugs”.

As a response to this staggering disparity and the justice system’s failure to minimize recidivism, the prison abolition movement was born with goals of abolishing prisons, policing, and surveillance of American citizens. The prison abolition movement was largely championed by Dr. Angela Davis, a prominent political activist who gained national attention following her arrest in 1970.

While criminal justice reform is supported by 91% of Americans, there is debate on whether prison reform or prison abolition is the solution for meaningful, effective change. Davis argues that abolition cannot be possible unless there are changes made to the language of conversations surrounding crime, changes in educational curriculum, and emergence of policy-focused community organizations.

CONCLUSION
Currently, there are no developed countries on Earth that have abolished prisons in their entirety. This means there are no real-world applications of prison abolition to reference. Therefore, guidance or data on its effectiveness is limited. Given that the American prison industrial complex lacks evidence of successfully reforming inmates and reducing the likelihood of reoffending, prison abolition does not appear to be as radical of a solution as once thought.

REFERENCES
American Civil Liberties Union. (2017, November 16). 91 percent of Americans support criminal justice reform, ACLU polling finds. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/91-percent-americans-support-criminal-justice-reform- aclu-polling-finds
Baum, D. (2016, April 5). Legalize it all: How to win the war on drugs. Harper’s Magazine. https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
Critical Resistance (2021). What is PIC? What is abolition?. http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common- language/
Davis, A., & Rodriguez, D. (2000). The challenge of prison abolition: A conversation. Social Justice, 27(3), 212- 218.
Gramlich, J. (2020, May 6). Black imprisonment rate in the U.S. has fallen by a third since 2006. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/share-of-black-white-hispanic-americans-in- prison-2018-vs-2006/
Moore, L. D., & Elkavich, A. (2008). Who’s using and who’s doing time: Incarceration, the war on drugs, and public health. American Journal of Public Health, 98(5), 782–786. https://doi-org./10.2105/AJPH.2007.126284

REFERENCES
National Institute of Justice. (2019, July 31). Measuring recidivism. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/measuring- recidivism#note1
Olsson, G. (Director). (2011). The black power mixtape 1967-1975 [Film]. Louverture Films.
Platt, T. (2013). Interview with Angela Davis. Social Justice, 40(1/2), 37–53.
Prison Research Education Action Project. (1976). Instead of prisons: A handbook for abolitionists. Faculty Press.
Shaw, R. (2009). Angela Y. Davis and the prison abolition movement, Part II. Contemporary Justice Review, 12(1), 101–104. https://doi-org/10.1080/10282580802685452
Sultan, R. (2020). Beyond bars: Prison abolition should be the American dream. Bitch Magazine: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, 87, 38–41.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2021). Why promote prison reform? https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/justice-and-prison-reform/prison-reform-and-alternatives-to- imprisonment.html

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