Maya Schenwar: Something we really try to emphasize in our book is that we should be suspicious of reforms that operate through a logic of replacement.
We both noticed an alarming trend: People were talking about criminal justice reform and decreasing the number of people in jails and prisons, but what was being proposed as alternatives to incarceration in buildings looked alarmingly like incarceration, except that it expanded into peoples’ homes and communities. Victoria Law: Maya is the editor of TruthOut, and I’ve been writing for the site about issues of incarceration since 2011. How did you decide that now was the time to collaborate on a book? “Working for real freedom,” they argue, “means resisting not only incarceration but all of its interconnected manifestations.” In their book, Law and Schenwar challenge the assumption that there must be a place society sends, isolates, and ultimately disposes of its undesirables, and they make a case for not only abolishing prisons but also building a world in which no person is faced with the threat of state punishment, surveillance, or control.ĭaniel Fernandez: You both have been writing about prisons and the legal system for a long time. As Victoria Law and Maya Schenwar explain in their new book Prison by Any Other Name, reducing our reliance on incarceration will not inexorably lead to a less punitive, restrictive, or retributive justice system.
In 2016, at least 168,000 people were imprisoned not for new crimes but because they had violated an element of their parole or probation agreement. These alternatives to prison often fuel incarceration, the exact outcome they are supposed to prevent.
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