1. What is Angela Davis’s overall objective (purpose) in writing this book? What is her overall THESIS (argument—her position on prisons)?
Since the 1970s, the growth of prisons has been exponential, and Angela Y. Davis worries why the community allows such a thing to happen. The growth is associated with the larger economic and social situations of the country. Davis argues that the growth of prisons is rarely seen, but it creates a cycle of incarceration and joblessness. She argues that prisons permit individuals to disassociate from the issues in their community (such as social, economic and racial inequality), and discharges the society “of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers” (Davis, 16). She further upholds the abolition argument and gives some very tangible and clear motives to examine the influence of the prison-industrial complex, rather than continue with prison reforms.
2. What was the 13th amendment, and how did that specifically lead to a large amount of African Americans being convicted as criminals post-Civil War? Who had been the primary prison population before? What types of labor systems emerged after the Civil War for those considered criminals?
With the passage of Amendment XIII in the U.S, involuntary servitude and slavery were purportedly eradicated. Nevertheless, a noteworthy exemption existed in the amendment. In its phrasing, involuntary servitude and slavery were eradicated "except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. According to the Black Codes, there were crimes defined by state law for which only black people could be duly convicted" (Davis, 28). Consequently, slaves that had been freed recently could be condemned to difficult labor again using the flawed system.
3. How did the fact that criminals can legally be enslaved affect the prison population of the 20th and 21st centuries? Why is this so significant?
Almost after the eradication of slavery, the southern nations hurried to establish a crooked justice system, which could lawfully limit liberty for slaves freed recently. Black individuals were the main prey of establishing the faulty criminal system, and it was seen by many as re-embodiment of slavery. Davis further notes that even though white Americans were Alabama's antebellum majorities, African-American slaves were generally perceived as the true offenders of the south. 1870s saw the growth of African-American inmates. This further sustained the faith that blacks remained natural criminals and, particularly, disposed to theft in the Southern states (Qtd. in Curtin, 42).
4. How are women treated in the prison system? How are they treated differently from men? Do they face different forms of violence? Explain. Are white and black women treated the same? Explain.
Davis focuses on the “gender structure of prison system.” Simply, this is not a way of adding females to the discussion or debating about women in the systems. According to her, it was a way of demonstrating how the ruling class applied thoughts concerning what women and men are perceived to be and to do to perpetuate flawed imprisonment practices. According to Davis, the population of women in U.S prisons is growing at an alarming rate today. Women labeled as criminals are faced with difficulties that make their imprisonment differ with that of men. They are more likely to be sent to mental institutions, take psychiatric drugs, and go through sexual assault. She also notes that up to the point when slavery was eradicated, many black women were subjected to penalty systems that considerably differed from those exposed to white women (Davis, 66). When Native and black females remained confined in penitentiaries, they were frequently separated on racial basis. Furthermore, there was a habit of sending females to male reformatories. In the southern states, African-American women suffered the brutalities of criminal lease structure, which was adulterated by the feminization penalty; neither the hard labor they were constrained to nor their sentences would be reduced by the merit of their sex.
5. What is the prison industrial complex, and how is that directly related to the 13th amendment? What corporations are responsible for using prison slave labor? Why is this not only detrimental to those being exploited, but to broader U.S. society as well?
According to Davis, “the term Prison industrial complex was introduced by activists and scholars to contest prevailing beliefs that increased levels of crime were the root cause of mounting prison populations. Instead, they argued, prison construction and the attendant drive to fill these new structures with human bodies have been driven by ideologies of racism and the pursuit of profit” (84). Davis points out that the growth of the prison-industrial complex is because of increased involvement of private organizations in security, prison construction, food programs, commodity production, and delivery of health care. She deeply delves into the compound profit web and exploitation bolstered up by corporations that service the prisons or run them as privatized enterprises. She highlights that by the year 2000, there were 26 for profit prison industries operating 150 prisons around the country. The biggest of these industries are Wackenhut and Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) controlling 76.4% of the private prison market worldwide (Davis, 97). Other industries include General Dynamics, Westinghouse, Alliant Techsystems and Minnesta Mining and Manufacture.
6. What happened to educational rehabilitation in the prisons? To the Pell Grant? Why is this important?
In 1994, the U.S Congress seized up the query of removing academic fund for prisoners. The U.S Congress settled for a verdict to amend the 1994 offense law that abolished all inmates’ Pell Grants, thus successfully canceled continued funding for all advanced informative plans. Marist College was obliged to dismiss its plan at Green Haven Prison after twenty-two years. A Professor at Marist College argued that the prisoners see books as gold because books are not available in prisons (Davis, 58). An inmate, who for several years attended as a worker for the institution, unhappily revealed that nothing remained in the reformatory apart from bodybuilding. Nevertheless, he wondered what of use bodybuilding if one could not build their brain? Ironically, bodybuilding and bodybuilding equipment were also eliminated not long after educational plans were removed from the U.S. prisons (Davis, 58-59).
7. What is Davis’s recommendation to change the privatization of prisons, and to prevent most blue collared crime from happening?
Angela Davis provides a remarkable input on the matter of imprisonment in the industrial justice system. She is fundamentally right in her examination. A vast prison industrialized complex is a communally or socially built philosophy that serves power. She is also correct in her proposal that a broader societal change rather than isolated determinations of improvement that only relate to civilizing prisons, is what is essential to eliminate the societal evils that generate and result from custodial systems.
Works Cited
Curtin, Mary Ellen. Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865-1900. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000. Print. Pg. 42.
Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003. Print. Pg. 1-115.
