Policy Press

Abolitionist Voices

Edited by David Scott

Published

Jan 1, 2025

Page count

320 pages

ISBN

978-1529224030

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Jan 1, 2025

Page count

320 pages

ISBN

978-1529224054

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press
Abolitionist Voices

Why have so many radical thinkers advocated for the abolition of prisons and punishment? And why have their ideas been so difficult to popularise or garner the political will for change? This book outlines several different approaches to penal abolitionism and showcases their calls for the ending of legal coercion, domination, and repression.

This exciting and innovative edited collection shows how abolitionist ideas have continued topicality and relevance in the present day and how they can collectively help with devising new ways of thinking about social problems as well as suggesting alternatives to existing penal policies, practices and institutions.

David Gordon Scott works at The Open University and is Co-Founding Editor of the journal Justice, Power and Resistance.

Foreword - Johannes Feest

Preface - David Gordon Scott

1. The Abolitionist Rhizome - David Gordon Scott

Part 1: Voices of the Oppressed

2. Kropotkin and the Anarchist Case for Penal Abolition - Ruth Kinna

3. “The Delectable Negro” George Jackson, Michel Foucault, Angela Davis and the Consumption of Black Rebellion - Joy James

4. Phenomenology, Abolition, and the Lived Experience of Incarceration - Lisa Guenther

Part 2: Abolitionist Ideas

5. Liberation and Reconciliation: The Christian Tradition and Prison Abolition - Hannah Bowman

6. Friedrich Nietzsche and his Abolitionist Thought - Caius Brandão

7. Marxism and the Political Economy of Abolitionism - Jon Burnett

8. Abolition and Foucault - Chloe Taylor

Part 3: The Scope of Oppression

9. The Slavery Industrial Complex - Viviane Saleh-Hanna

10. Abolition and the Colonial Carceral Archipelago - Thalia Anthony and Harry Blagg

11. Southerning Non-punitive and Abolitionist Feminism - Valeria Vegh Weis

Part 4: Struggles for Liberation and Justice

12. Eco-abolition: Policing Environmental Injustice - Nathan Stephens Griffin and Andrea Brock

13. Abolitionist Activism in Post-Mass-Media Societies: Moral Panic and the Amplification of Abolitionist Voices - Michael Dellwing

14. Libertarian Socialism and the Struggle for Liberative Justice - David Gordon Scott