History & Slavery
What is the 13th Amendment?
This amendment abolished slavery "except as punishment for a crime."
What is the prison-industrial complex?
The term for the interconnectedness of prisons and capitalist profit.
What are community-based alternatives?
Davis argues that we must think beyond prisons and invest community based alternatives.
What is that prisons make society safer?
Angela Davis encourages us to question this assumption about prisons.
What are some community-based alternatives to incarceration?
Mental health services, education, housing, and substance abuse treatment.
What are the Black Codes?
These post-Civil War laws criminalized Black life to sustain forced labor.
What are private corporations?
This type of industry profits from prison construction and operation.
What is the ideology of punishment?
Abolition calls for dismantling prisons and also ending this punitive mindset.
What is a new system of care and support?
Abolitionists believe we must build this before tearing down the prison system.
What is prison abolition?
Angela Davis argues that the term "prison abolition" envisions a world without prisons, focusing on alternative forms of justice and community care.
What is convict leasing?
This system leased incarcerated Black people to private companies for profit.
What is prison legitimacy?
Davis critiques this belief that prisons are necessary for public safety.
What is restorative justice?
According to Davis, this type of justice focuses on healing rather than revenge.
What is education to Davis?
Davis sees this institution as a more transformative alternative to incarceration.
What is community safety?
This concept encourages society to reconsider what safety means and how it can be achieved without incarceration.
What is slavery?
Angela Davis argues that the origins of the U.S. prison system are rooted in this form of racial domination.
What are rural or deindustrialized areas?
As incarceration grew, so did the hiring of prison guards, especially in these regions.
What is education, housing, and health care to Davis?
Instead of expanding prisons, Davis urges investment in these social institutions.
What is healing and collective accountability?
Davis urges us to imagine justice as this, rather than relying on punishment or revenge.
What is the post-Reconstruction era?
Davis points out that the rise of mass incarceration is directly tied to this historical period, which sought to maintain racial order after the abolition of slavery.
What is the criminalization of Blackness?
This concept explains how the carceral system evolved to control Black bodies after Emancipation.
What is carceral capitalism?
This concept refers to the growing economic and political investment in mass incarceration.
What is the abolition of punitive structures and the creation of transformative justice systems?
The abolition of punitive structures and the creation of transformative justice systems means ending prisons and creating ways to help people heal and grow instead of punishing them.
What is a radical reimagining of justice?
Davis emphasizes that this shift in perspective is necessary to imagine a future where prisons are no longer central to our justice system.
What is the creation of a more just and equitable society?
According to Angela Davis, this societal transformation is key to abolishing prisons and addressing systemic issues like racial injustice and inequality.