Are Prisons Obsolete?

Davis first uses an epigraph in this chapter, which she includes at the beginning of her chapters for the rest of the book. An epigraph is a short quotation that introduces a chapter’s main theme or argument. Her Chapter 2 epigraph is a quotation from Adam Jay Hirsch about the resemblance between penitentiaries and slave plantations. The quotation reflects Davis’s argument that prisons, especially in the South, were not tools of rehabilitation but tools of punishment for Black communities because “the penitentiary's internal regime resembled that of the plantation so closely” (22). Davis reintroduces Hirsch’s argument later in the chapter, expanding on the similarities it mentions. Comparing plantations to prisons, Hirsch found:

Both institutions subordinated their subjects to the will of others. […] Both institutions reduced their subjects to dependence on others for the supply of basic human services such as food and shelter. Both isolated their subjects from the general population by confining them to a fixed habitat. And both frequently coerced their subjects to work (27).

Hirsch’s analysis continues by revealing similarities between Slave Codes and prison punishments in that both “deprived enslaved human beings of virtually all rights” (27). The epigraph therefore introduces the chapter’s topic and the book’s overarching theme of the legacies of slavery within prisons.

Davis alludes to historical moments in American history that produced abolitionist movements and were all institutions of white supremacy, much like prison. Davis describes the racist objectives of these eras:

U.S. chattel slavery was a system of forced labor that relied on racist ideas and beliefs to justify the relegation of people of African descent to the legal status of property. Lynching was an extralegal institution that surrendered thousands of African American lives to the violence of ruthless racist mobs. Under segregation, black people were legally declared second-class citizens, for whom voting, job, education, and housing rights were drastically curtailed, if they were available at all (25).

The author shows that these institutions are not relics of the past but rather are still very much entrenched in “contemporary structures, attitudes, and behaviors” (24). Davis herself, born in 1944, lived through segregation in her Alabama hometown. She shares this context of American racism not only to support her claim that prisons are the descendant of racist institutions, but also to give hope to the abolitionist movement. She argues that if these institutions, which were socially and legally engrained in US culture, could successfully be abolished, prison abolition is not as far-fetched as some would believe.

Davis asserts that prisons disproportionately incarcerate Black people. She explains that dominant white supremacist ideologies construct Black people as innately criminal and in need of control. Davis declares that Black people, after gaining emancipation from slavery, became the target of new laws, which accounted for the rapid change in prison demographics. Davis quotes the Mississippi Black Codes to show how behaviors, from theft and drunkenness to being “wanton in conduct or speech” and “idle and disorderly” (29), were criminalized only for Black communities. The laws were intentionally vague, allowing white people to “exact racial retribution” (34) through the courts, punishing newly freed slaves by imprisoning them—and often even sending them back to plantations as part of their punishment. Mary Ellen Curtin noted that before emancipation, Alabama’s prison population was 99% white, but after emancipation and the introduction of Black Codes, “the overwhelming majority of Alabama's convicts were black” (29). This demographic shift manufactured proof that Black communities were inherently criminal, which still resonates today in popular rhetoric about criminality and evildoers.

A key aspect of Davis’s theme about prisons perpetuating the legacies of slavery and racism is the early practice of convict leasing and country chain gangs. Both systems forced hard labor on prisoners in chains, but convict leasing was overseen by private entities—plantation owners and industry corporations—whereas prison officers oversaw chain gangs. Davis calls these systems the legal continuance of slavery, which used a loophole in the 13th Amendment to allow involuntary servitude “as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” (28). Focusing on the convict lease system, Davis illuminates the harsh conditions that prisoners endured, sometimes experiencing even crueler conditions than slavery. Davis lists several books—like One Dies, Get Another, and Worse than Slavery—which support her claim in their titles alone. She argues that because plantation owners were not monetarily invested in convicts as they were with slaves, they were more likely to dole out extreme punishments. She lists some examples of punishments from official Mississippi records in the 1880s, like receiving lashes for “sorry planting” and “slow hoeing” (32) or having a “metal spur riveted to their feet” (32) for trying to escape. By increasingly convicting Black people for petty crimes, white plantation owners effectively retained earlier systems of cheap slave labor.

Despite convict labor being such a widespread practice, Davis notes that the public is ignorant of how extensively it was—and is—used. Davis includes Alex Lichtenstein’s study of Southern convict labor to shows how states like Georgia used convicts to cheaply expand their infrastructure. Convict labor, particularly on roads, was responsible for making Atlanta a commercial hub—even its famous Peachtree Street was built “on the backs of convicts” (34). Convict leasing, Lichtenstein shows, was an intentional “deployment of racist strategies to swiftly achieve industrialization in the South” (33-34). Davis shares her own knowledge of convict labor, which she discovered is a much bigger part of her life than she once realized. Many of her childhood friends had parents in the mines who “inherited their place in Birmingham’s industrial development from black convicts forced to do this work under the lease system” (35). Davis claims that this revelation caused her to reevaluate her life, making her question where else the prison system was hiding in her history. She entreats others to do the same kind of reevaluation, affirming, “There are aspects of our history that we need to interrogate and rethink” (36) before looking to change the future. This approach personalizes the large issue of convict labor, inviting greater investment in fixing racist prison programs.