Meeting Notes - Angela Davis and the Role of Prison
This is the 3rd of 3 selected documents from our weekly Philosophy Club. These documents are meant to introduce our members to new thinkers and ideas in philosophy.
Angela Davis speaking to a crowd of protestors
Angela Davis is currently a professor at UC Santa Cruz
Angela Y. Davis is an internationally known activist who has worked to combat all forms of oppression in the U.S. and abroad. Over the years she has been active as a student, teacher, writer, scholar, and activist/organizer. Her academic work focuses on Feminism, African American studies, critical theory, popular music culture and social consciousness, and philosophy of punishment (women's jails and prisons).
“Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.”
“My question is, Why are people so quick to assume that locking away an increasingly large proportion of the U.S. population would help those who live in the free world feel safer and more secure?”
“This is a measure of how difficult it is to envision a social order that does not rely on the threat of sequestering people in dreadful places designed to separate them from their communities and their families,” said Davis. “The prison is considered so natural and so normal that it is extremely hard to imagine life without them.”
Questions to Consider
What is the role of prison?
Is there a way for prison systems to exist without innate harm/bias?
Do we need prisons? And if so, how do we improve them?
Consider these perspectives on prison:
Retribution — Individual suffers equivalent to harm caused
Rehabilitation — Designed to reduce prison recidivism (return to prison)
Without Guilt — Surrounding circumstances caused crime
Incapacitation — Prevent individuals from causing greater harm
Deterrence — Prevent individuals from committing crimes again