Davis

Angela Davis’s in-depth analysis on the injustices of the prison system provides valuable details on some of the unfair practices with statistics that support the claims. In this article her goal was to persuade the audience to support of the abolition of prisons, which at first glance even she admits sounds a little deranged, however as she goes more in depth with her claim she makes a valid argument that a world without prison could prove more efficient and effective in the reform of prisoners. Davis is extremely aware how widely unpopular her statement is, she even states, “Prison abolitionists are dismissed as utopians and idealists whose ideas are at best unrealistic and impracticable, and, at worst, mystifying and foolish.” (9-10). This is mostly due to the fact that when referring to forms of punishment for criminals the question of whether or not the death penalty should be allowed comes up very frequently. By doing this her stance falls even further away from the normal stance on the reformation of criminals to a point where her idea sounds completely foreign. Throughout “Are Prisons Obsolete?,” Davis argues that jails in todays world has become completely obsolete due to racism within the prison system and the fact that jail is too oftenly used as a punishment for crimes. She inquires “whether the prison has become an obso­lete institution has become especially urgent in light of the fact that more than two million people (out of a world total of nine million) now inhabit U.S. prisons, jails, youth facili­ties, and immigrant detention centers.” (10). By stating this, Davis questions the statistics that exist within the prison system. These statistics are undeniably glaring examples of the United States’ penitentiary lack to actually prevent crimes, deter future criminals, and reform current ones. Furthermore, the numbers proved that certain groups of color were targeted when placing individuals in prison, this serves as a clear example of racism. For example, there were “mass arrests and detention of people of Middle Eastern, South Asian, or Muslim her­itage in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. (26).” Although Davis made some very valid points about the injustices and fallacies with our prison systems, I feel that abolishing prison completely is not the best way to solve the problem, rather small corrections over time is the most efficient way to completely fix what has been going on in our nations prisons.