Prison by Any Other Name by Maya Schenwar

We challenge these reforms and highlight how people are creating new ways to address and prevent violence and harm. One “wrong” step - like going to the store without permission - could mean incarceration. But they’re still forms of coercive control. Instead, these alternatives pose seemingly more “humane” measures than locking people in physical buildings, called jails, prisons or immigrant detention centers. They also ignore the underlying causes of why people commit harm (or engage in acts that are criminalized). These alternatives fail to recognize that policing and imprisonment are built on bedrocks of white supremacy, colonialism and patriarchy. But here we are - and our book examines the pitfalls of popularly proposed reforms that come up repeatedly as alternatives to mass incarceration. We could never have predicted this moment of demands to defund the police, increasing calls for abolition and people wanting to know what a world without police (and prisons) might look like. Victoria Law: We started writing this book in 2015. James Kilgore : How did you come to write this book and why do you think it is relevant at this moment?

First, they alert us to reformist policy tricks and rebranding that authorities will use to keep “reproducing oppression on a mass scale.” Second, they help us shape our imagining of a different society to “view abolition not like a monumental goal we have no hope of ever reaching, but something we practice every day.” In this interview, Schenwar and Law discuss how they came to write the book, why “reform” movements can often co-opt the push for abolition, and why working toward abolition is not simply a distant vision but something we must practice every day. In the book, Schenwar ( Truthout’s editor-in-chief) and Law (an investigative reporter who has been covering prison issues for Truthout and other outlets for years) balance two critical needs. As millions of people ponder a future without police and prisons, and as authorities try to dream up ways of derailing the momentum of popular insurrection, Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law’s new book, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, provides a guide to staying on the path to transformation.

Prison by Any Other Name by Maya Schenwar