Envisioning Abolition
Socialism, Anarchism and Penal Abolitionism in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth centuries
Edited by David Gordon Scott and Emma Bell
Published
Mar 1, 2025Page count
400 pagesISBN
978-1529234770Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Mar 1, 2025Page count
400 pagesISBN
978-1529234794Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
Envisioning Abolition
Abolitionist thought visualises a world without prisons – or a radical reduction or transformation of prisons and punishment. This fascinating book explores the abolitionist ideas of key early socialists and anarchists, writing from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. It considers how these radical thinkers can provide insights into our present condition, both by highlighting the harms of punishment and by pointing to inspiring alternatives to current policy and practice.
By examining their calls for the ending of legal coercion, domination and repression, the book shows how the ideas of early socialists and anarchists can assist those engaging in emancipatory struggles against penal and social injustice today.
David Gordon Scott works at The Open University and is Co-Founding Editor of the journal Justice, Power and Resistance.
Emma Bell is Professor of British Politics at Savoie University and is Co-Founding Editor of the journal Justice, Power and Resistance.
1. Abolitionism in Red and Black - Emma Bell and David Gordon Scott
2. The Abolitionist Ideas of William Godwin in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries - Ruby Tuke
3. Robert Owen and the Owenites: Socialism and Penal Abolitionism in Early Nineteenth Century Britain - Ophélie Siméon
4. Leo Tolstoy and Penal Abolition - Andrei Zorin
5. The Penal Abolitionism of Arthur St John - Peter Cox and Paul Taylor
6. Edward Carpenter’s Penological Thought: A Libertarian Socialist’s Contingent Abolitionism - Jonathan Baldwin
7. ‘But have you no prisons at all now?’: Picturing Prison Abolition in William Morris’s News from Nowhere - Owen Holland
8. Beyond Sanction: Jean-Marie Guyau and Penal Abolition - Federico Testa
9. Pyotr Kropotkin: Foundations of Anarchist Prison Abolition - Robert Weide
10. Anarchism and the Abolition of the Criminal Justice System: The Struggle for the Discourse on Evolution and Social Order in Spain - Alejandro Forero Cuellar
11. Fear or Freedom? Errico Malatesta on Crime and Punishment - Davide Turcato
12. Envisioning a New Society: Pietro Gori and the Abolition of Criminal Justice - Marco Manfredi
13. ‘Cemeteries of the living dead’: Eugene V. Debs, Prison Abolitionist - Lisa Phillips
14. Altgeld’s Protégé: Clarence Darrow and the Abolition of Prisons and Capital Punishment in the United States - Andrew Kersten
15. Emma Goldman: The Making of a Prison Abolitionist - Penny A. Weiss
16. Seeing Through the Game: Alexander Berkman and the Modern Anti-Prison Movement - Søren Hough
