A conversation between Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez
Angela Y. Davis teaches in the History of Consciousness program at
the University of California (215 Oakes College, Santa Cruz, CA 95060),
and has been actively involved in prison-related campaigns since the
events that led to her own incarceration in 1970. Dylan Rodriguez is an
Assistant Professor at University of California - Riverside and was
involved in the formation of Critical Resistance. Rodriguezs first book,
Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the Formation of
the U.S. Prison Regime will be published in 2005 by the University of
Minnesota Press.
Dylan: Your emergence as a radical prison activist was
deeply influenced by your experience as a prisoner. Could you talk a bit
about how imprisonment affected your political formation, and the
impact that it had on your eventual identification as prison
abolitionists?
Angela: The time I spent in jail was both an outcome of
my work on prison issues and a profound influence on my subsequent
trajectory as a prison activist. When I was arrested in the summer of
1970 in connection with my involvement in the campaign to free George
Jackson and the Soledad Brothers, I was one of many activists who had
been previously active in defense movements. In editing the anthology,
If They Come in the Morning (1971) while I was in jail, Bettina Aptheker
and I attempted to draw upon the organizing and legal experiences
associated with a vast number of contemporary campaigns to free
political prisoners. The most important lessons emanating from those
campaigns, we thought, demonstrated the need to examine the overall role
of the prison system, especially its class and racial character. There
was a relationship, as George Jackson had insisted, between the rising
numbers of political prisoners and the imprisonment of increasing
numbers of poor people of color. If prison was the state-sanctioned
destination for activists such as myself, it was also used as a
surrogate solution to social problems associated with poverty and
racism. Although imprisonment was equated with rehabilitation in the
dominant discourse at that time, it was obvious to us that its primary
purpose was repression. Along with other radical activists of that era,
we thus began to explore what it might mean to combine our call for the
freedom of political prisoners with an embryonic call for the abolition
of prisons. Of course we had not yet thought through all of the
implications of such a position, but today it seems that what was viewed
at that time as political naivete, the untheorized and utopian impulses
of young people trying to be revolutionary, foreshadowed what was to
become, at the turn of the century, the important project of critically
examining the political economy of a prison system, whose unrestrained
growth urgently needs to be reversed.
Dylan: What interests me is the manner in which your
trial -- and the rather widespread social movement that enveloped it,
along with other political trials -- enabled a wide variety of activists
to articulate a radical critique of U.S. jurisprudence and
imprisonment. The strategic framing of yours and others' individual
political biographies within a broader set of social and historical
forces -- state violence, racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, the
growth and transformation of U.S. capitalism -- disrupted the logic of
the criminal justice apparatus in a fundamental way. Turning attention
away from conventional notions of "crime" as isolated, individual
instances of misbehavior necessitated a basic questioning of the
conditions that cast "criminality" as a convenient political rationale
for the warehousing of large numbers of poor, disenfranchised, and
displaced black people and other people of color. Many activists are now
referring to imprisonment as a new form of slavery, refocusing
attention on the historical function of the 13th Amendment in
reconstructing enslavement as a punishment reserved for those "duly
convicted." Yet, when we look more closely at the emergence of the
prison-industrial complex, the language of enslavement fails to the
extent that it relies on the category of forced labor as its basic
premise. People frequently forget that the majority of imprisoned people
are not workers, and that work is itself made available only as a
"privilege" for the most favored prisoners. The logic of the
prison-industrial complex is closer to what you, George Jackson, and
others were forecasting back then as mass containment, the effective
elimination of large numbers of (poor, black) people from the realm of
civil society. Yet, the current social impact of the prison-industrial
complex must have been virtually unfathomable 30 years ago. One could
make the argument that the growth of this massive structure has met or
exceeded the most ominous forecasts of people who, at that time, could
barely have imagined that at the turn of the century two million people
would be encased in a prison regime that is far more sophisticated and
repressive than it was at the onset of Nixon's presidency, when about
150,000 people were imprisoned nationally in decrepit, overcrowded
buildings. So in a sense, your response to the first question echoes the
essential truth of what was being dismissed, in your words, as the
paranoid "political naivete" of young radical activists in the early
1970s. I think we might even consider the formation of prison
abolitionism as a logical response to this new human warehousing
strategy. In this vein, could you give a basic summary of the
fundamental principles underlying the contemporary prison abolitionist
movement?
Angela: First of all, I must say that I would hesitate
to characterize the contemporary prison abolition movement as a
homogeneous and united international effort to displace the institution
of the prison. For example, the International Conference on Penal
Abolition (ICOPA), which periodically brings scholars and activists
together from Europe, South America, Australia, Africa, and North
America, reveals the varied nature of this movement. Dorsey Nunn, former
prisoner and longtime activist, has a longer history of involvement
with ICOPA than I do since he attended the conference in New Zealand
three years ago. My first direct contact with ICOPA was this past May,
when I attended the Toronto gathering.
Dylan: Was there anything about ICOPA that particularly impressed you?
Angela: The ICOPA conference in Toronto revealed some
of the major strengths and weaknesses of the abolitionist movement.
First of all, despite the rather homogenous character of their circle,
they have managed to keep the notion of abolitionism alive precisely at a
time when developing radical alternatives to the prison-industrial
complex is becoming a necessity. That is to say, abolitionism should not
now be considered an unrealizable utopian dream, but rather the only
possible way to halt the further transnational development of prison
industries. That ICOPA claims supporters in Europe and Latin America is
an indication of what is possible. However, the racial homogeneity of
ICOPA, and the related failure to incorporate an analysis of race into
the theoretical framework of their version of abolitionism, is a major
weakness. The conference demonstrated that while faith-based approaches
to the abolition of penal systems can be quite powerful, organizing
strategies must go much further. We need to develop and popularize the
kinds of analyses that explain why people of color predominate in prison
populations throughout the world and how this structural racism is
linked to the globalization of capital.
Dylan: Yes, I found that the political vision of ICOPA
was extraordinarily limited, especially considering its professed
commitment to a more radical abolitionist analysis and program. This
undoubtedly had a lot to do with the underlying racism of the
organization itself, which was reflected in the language of some of the
conference resolutions: "We support all transformative measures which
enable us to live better in community with those we as a society find
most difficult, and most consistently marginalize or exclude" (emphasis
added)1. A major figure in ICOPA even accused a small group
of people of color in attendance of being "racist" when they attempted
to constructively criticize the overwhelming white homogeneity of the
conference and the need for creative strategies to engage communities of
color in such an important political discussion. Several black
student-activists I met at ICOPA told me how alienated they felt at the
conference, especially when they realized that the ICOPA organizers had
never attempted to contact the Toronto-based organizations with which
these student-activists were working: a major black
anti-police-brutality coalition, a black prisoner support organization,
etc. So I certainly share your frustrations with ICOPA. At the same
time, I find myself wondering how a new political formation of prison
abolitionism can form in such a reactionary national and global climate.
You have been involved with a variety of prison movements for the last
30 years, so maybe you can help me out. How do you think about this new
political challenge within a broader historical perspective?
Angela: There are multiple histories of prison
abolition. The Scandinavian scholar/activist Thomas Mathieson first
published his germinal text, The Politics of Abolition, in 1974, when
activist movements were calling for the disestablishment of prisons --
in the aftermath of the Attica Rebellion and prison uprisings throughout
Europe. He was concerned with transforming prison reform movements into
more radical movements to abolish prisons as the major institutions of
punishment. There was a pattern of decarceration in the Netherlands
until the mid-1980s, which seemed to establish the Dutch system as a
model prison system, and the later rise in prison construction and the
expansion of the incarcerated population has served to stimulate
abolitionist ideas. Criminologist Willem de Haan published a book in
1990 entitled The Politics of Redress: Crime, Punishment, and Penal
Abolition. One of the most interesting texts, from the point of view of
U.S. activist history is Fay Honey Knopp's volume Instead of Prison: A
Handbook for Prison Abolitionists, which was published in 1976, with
funding from the American Friends. This handbook points out the
contradictory relationship between imprisonment and an "enlightened,
free society." Prison abolition, like the abolition of slavery, is a
long-range goal and the handbook argues that an abolitionist approach
requires an analysis of "crime" that links it with social structures, as
opposed to individual pathology, as well as "anticrime" strategies that
focus on the provision of social resources. Of course, there are many
versions of prison abolitionism -- including those that propose to
abolish punishment altogether and replace it with reconciliatory
responses to criminal acts. In my opinion, the most powerful relevance
of abolitionist theory and practice today resides in the fact that
without a radical position vis-a-vis the rapidly expanding prison
system, prison architecture, prison surveillance, and prison system
corporatization, prison culture, with all its racist and totalitarian
implications, will continue not only to claim ever increasing numbers of
people of color, but also to shape social relations more generally in
our society. Prison needs to be abolished as the dominant mode of
addressing social problems that are better solved by other institutions
and other means. The call for prison abolition urges us to imagine and
strive for a very different social landscape.
Dylan: I think you make a subtle but important point
here: prison and penal abolition imply an analysis of society that
illuminates the repressive logic, as well as the fascistic historical
trajectory, of the prison's growth as a social and industrial
institution. Theoretically and politically, this "radical position," as
you call it, introduces a new set of questions that does not necessarily
advocate a pragmatic "alternative" or a concrete and immediate
"solution" to what currently exists. In fact, I think this is an
entirely appropriate position to assume when dealing with a policing and
jurisprudence system that inherently disallows the asking of such
fundamental questions as: Why are some lives considered more disposable
than others under the weight of police policy and criminal law? How have
we arrived at a place where killing is valorized and defended when it
is organized by the state -- I'm thinking about the street lynchings of
Diallo and Dorismond in New York City, the bombing of the MOVE
organization in Philadelphia in 1985, the ongoing bombing of Iraqi
civilians by the United States -- yet viciously avenged (by the state)
when committed by isolated individuals? Why have we come to associate
community safety and personal security with the degree to which the
state exercises violence through policing and criminal justice? You've
written elsewhere that the primary challenge for penal abolitionists in
the United States is to construct a political language and theoretical
discourse that disarticulates crime from punishment. In a sense, this
implies a principled refusal to pander to the typically pragmatist
impulse to demand absolute answers and solutions right now to a problem
that has deep roots in the social formation of the United States since
the 1960s. I think your open-ended conception of prison abolition also
allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the prison-industrial
complex as a set of institutional and political relationships that
extend well beyond the walls of the prison proper. So in a sense, prison
abolition is itself a broader critique of society. This brings me to
the next question: What are the most crucial distinctions between the
political commitments and agendas of prison reformists and those of
prison abolitionists?
Angela: The seemingly unbreakable link between prison
reform and prison development -- referred to by Foucault in his analysis
of prison history -- has 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.
The most difficult question for advocates of prison abolition is how to
establish a balance between reforms that are clearly necessary to
safeguard the lives of prisoners and those strategies designed to
promote the eventual abolition of prisons as the dominant mode of
punishment. In other words, I do not think that there is a strict
dividing line between reform and abolition. For example, it would be
utterly absurd for a radical prison activist to refuse to support the
demand for better health care inside Valley State, California's largest
women's prison, under the pretext that such reforms would make the
prison a more viable institution. Demands for improved health care,
including protection from sexual abuse and challenges to the myriad ways
in which prisons violate prisoners' human rights, can be integrated
into an abolitionist context that elaborates specific decarceration
strategies and helps to develop a popular discourse on the need to shift
resources from punishment to education, housing, health care, and other
public resources and services.
Dylan: Speaking of developing a popular discourse, the
Critical Resistance gathering in September 1998 seemed to pull together
an incredibly wide array of prison activists -- cultural workers,
prisoner support and legal advocates, former prisoners, radical
teachers, all kinds of researchers, progressive policy scholars and
criminologists, and many others. Although you were quite clear in the
conference's opening plenary session that the purpose of Critical
Resistance was to encourage people to imagine radical strategies for a
sustained prison abolition campaign, it was clear to me that only a few
people took this dimension of the conference seriously. That is, it
seemed convenient for people to rejoice at the unprecedented level of
participation in this presumably "radical" prison activist gathering,
but the level of analysis and political discussion generally failed to
embrace the creative challenge of formulating new ways to link existing
activism to a larger abolitionist agenda. People were generally more
interested in developing an analysis of the prison-industrial complex
that incorporated the local work that they were involved in, which I
think is an important practical connection to make. At the same time, I
think there is an inherent danger in conflating militant reform and
human rights strategies with the underlying logic of anti-prison
radicalism, which conceives of the ultimate eradication of the prison as
a site of state violence and social repression. What is required, at
least in part, is a new vernacular that enables this kind of political
dream. How does prison abolition necessitate new political language,
teachings, and organizing strategies? How could these strategies help to
educate and organize people inside and outside the prison for
abolition?
Angela: In order to imagine a world without prisons --
or at least a social landscape no longer dominated by the prison -- a
new popular vocabulary will have to replace the current language, which
articulates crime and punishment in such a way that we cannot think
about a society without crime except as a society in which all the
criminals are imprisoned. Thus, one of the first challenges is to be
able to talk about the many ways in which punishment is linked to
poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other modes of dominance. In
the university, the emergence of the interdisciplinary field of prison
studies can help to trouble the prevailing criminology discourses that
shape public policy as well as popular ideas about the permanence of
prisons. 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.
Dylan: Your last comment suggests that we need to
rupture the ideological structures embodied by the rise of the
prison-industrial complex. How does prison abolition force us to rethink
common assumptions about jurisprudence, in particular "criminal
justice?"
Angela: Since the invention of the prison as punishment
in Western society during the late 1700s, criminal justice systems have
so thoroughly depended on imprisonment that we have lost the ability to
imagine other ways to solve the problem of "crime." One of the
interesting contributions of prison abolitionists has been to propose
other paradigms of punishment or to suggest that we need to extricate
ourselves from the assumption that punishment must be a necessary
response to all violations of the law. Reconciliatory or restorative
justice, for example, is presented by some abolitionists as an approach
that has proved successful in non-Western societies -- Native American
societies, for example -- and that can be tailored for use in urban
contexts in cases that involve property and other offenses. The
underlying idea is that in many cases, the reconciliation of offender
and victim (including monetary compensation to the victim) is a much
more progressive vision of justice than the social exile of the
offender. This is only one example -- the point is that we will not be
free to imagine other ways of addressing crime as long as we see the
prison as a permanent fixture for dealing with all or most violations of
the law.
Note 1 The transcript History Is A Weapon is coding from did not show what part was emphasized. We apologize.
