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The Idea of Prison Abolition
An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the practice of imprisonment
Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or "the new Jim Crow." Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended altogether? In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby examines the abolitionist case against prisons and its formidable challenge to would-be prison reformers.
Philosophers have long theorized punishment and its justifications, but they haven't paid enough attention to incarceration or its related problems in societies structured by racial and economic injustice. Taking up this urgent topic, Shelby argues that prisons, once reformed and under the right circumstances, can be legitimate and effective tools of crime control. Yet he draws on insights from black radicals and leading prison abolitionists, especially Angela Davis, to argue that we should dramatically decrease imprisonment and think beyond bars when responding to the problem of crime.
While a world without prisons might be utopian, The Idea of Prison Abolition makes the case that we can make meaningful progress toward this ideal by abolishing the structural injustices that too often lead to crime and its harmful consequences.
Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or "the new Jim Crow." Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended altogether? In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby examines the abolitionist case against prisons and its formidable challenge to would-be prison reformers.
Philosophers have long theorized punishment and its justifications, but they haven't paid enough attention to incarceration or its related problems in societies structured by racial and economic injustice. Taking up this urgent topic, Shelby argues that prisons, once reformed and under the right circumstances, can be legitimate and effective tools of crime control. Yet he draws on insights from black radicals and leading prison abolitionists, especially Angela Davis, to argue that we should dramatically decrease imprisonment and think beyond bars when responding to the problem of crime.
While a world without prisons might be utopian, The Idea of Prison Abolition makes the case that we can make meaningful progress toward this ideal by abolishing the structural injustices that too often lead to crime and its harmful consequences.
248 pages, Hardcover
Published November 15, 2022
21 people are currently reading
458 people want to read
About the author
Tommie Shelby
15 books27 followersTommie Shelby is Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University. He is the author of Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform (2016), We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (2005), and coeditor (with Derrick Darby) of Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason (2005). He is also a former editor of the magazine Transition.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 14, 2022
I had a tough time coming up with a rating for this book.
In this book Shelby argues for radical prison reform against prison abolition, primarily interacting with the work of Angela Davis. I think Shelby does a great job of thoroughly addressing the pain points seen in prison abolitionist literature and acknowledging that there are serious issues with our prison systems (mass-incarceration, prison-industrial complex, poor conditions in prisons, poor mental health care, etc.) Ultimately, he still argues for radical reform over abolition.
By the end of the book I had a good sense of what would happen in a hypothetical situation where the reforms the author thought were necessary happened. In this case we could imagine that prisons would still serve a purpose so therefore abolition is, in his mind, a utopian, pie in the sky ideology that is ultimately unhelpful.
I found his arguments thorough and the book is well written (why I’ve rated it highly) but I couldn’t subscribe fully to his conclusion. To me, both abolition and reform are utopian and that isn’t a bad thing. I find it in the same category of social democracy vs. socialism; we’re so far away from either of them that it feels a little silly to argue between them. The best part of the book is that it identifies the common issues found in both that we all should work toward fixing.
In this book Shelby argues for radical prison reform against prison abolition, primarily interacting with the work of Angela Davis. I think Shelby does a great job of thoroughly addressing the pain points seen in prison abolitionist literature and acknowledging that there are serious issues with our prison systems (mass-incarceration, prison-industrial complex, poor conditions in prisons, poor mental health care, etc.) Ultimately, he still argues for radical reform over abolition.
By the end of the book I had a good sense of what would happen in a hypothetical situation where the reforms the author thought were necessary happened. In this case we could imagine that prisons would still serve a purpose so therefore abolition is, in his mind, a utopian, pie in the sky ideology that is ultimately unhelpful.
I found his arguments thorough and the book is well written (why I’ve rated it highly) but I couldn’t subscribe fully to his conclusion. To me, both abolition and reform are utopian and that isn’t a bad thing. I find it in the same category of social democracy vs. socialism; we’re so far away from either of them that it feels a little silly to argue between them. The best part of the book is that it identifies the common issues found in both that we all should work toward fixing.
April 23, 2024
Initially intimidated by this, but it felt very readable. I am a rank beginner when it comes to Prison abolition. I have read Are prison's Obsolete, Carceral Capitalism by Jackie Wang, and a handful of articles. I think the project is important even if some of the analysis leave me a bit cold. The way analytical philosophy abstracts the lived experience of groups living in society is why the Black Radical Tradition developed a different approach to theorizing their politics. At least, that's what Shelby seems to argue, but he does the necessary work to think through the issues at hand. In a sense, this book appears to be an invitation to deeper critical study of Angela Davis's work, which is a really worthwhile project. I will return to this one.
December 5, 2024
Read for Punishment class, its an analysis of the pros and cons of prison abolition. Abolitionists do identify the serious problems of the American justice system: racism, punishing people for being raised in difficult circumstances, etc. Radical reform would include drastically reducing the use of prisons, expanding the use of transformative justice, but still allowing prisons in some cases (punishment for deterrent, not for retributive purposes). Shelby is not an abolitionist; he's more of a radical reformer. I largely agree with him; abolitionism runs into serious problems with its ability to stop crimes unless it becomes utopian (we just fix all the problems of society and human nature, and then we abolish prisons).
April 25, 2024
A very thought provoking read. My primary complaint is that I always wanted more detail and had more questions- a consequence of addressing prison abolition in 200 pages. I do not agree with Shelby 100%, but his writing has helped me think through my own philosophies. Highly recommend to anyone who wants to think through the morality & uses of prisons in the US.
November 16, 2023
It’s amazing how social scientists and philosophers/humanities academics can have the same points but the lack of rigor is so high for the latter. The writing was underwhelming and on par with a first year grad student as opposed to a Harvard professor. This also could have been condensed to a peer reviewed article instead of a book.
April 17, 2023
little to no engagement with abolitionist praxis. boring and redundant regurgitation of classic carceral tropes about deterrence and conflation of crime & harm.
January 16, 2025
4.5/5
I have had my eye on this book for awhile and finally found it at the top of my reading list. Prison reform and prison abolition are two ideas that I have been very interested in for awhile, but lacked the knowledge to really have an educated opinion about where on the spectrum I stood. Shelby argues for heavy prison reformation and sets up the idea that abolition of the prison system in its entirety is too extreme. I see many of his points, but I am still unclear as to where I stand on reform vs abolition of prisons. One thing is clear: The prison-industrial complex has got to go! And the best way for that to be accomplished is still being worked out in my brain: through a complete upheaval of the system or through intense paradigm shifts of the true purpose of our prison system or some other change completely, idk. All I know is that questioning these systems (especially in their inherent oppressive, racist nature) is necessary and I will continue to read/learn more. Shelby offers a great starting point of knowledge on this topic and I would definitely recommend it, especially to anyone that has never thought to question the validity of prisons.
I have had my eye on this book for awhile and finally found it at the top of my reading list. Prison reform and prison abolition are two ideas that I have been very interested in for awhile, but lacked the knowledge to really have an educated opinion about where on the spectrum I stood. Shelby argues for heavy prison reformation and sets up the idea that abolition of the prison system in its entirety is too extreme. I see many of his points, but I am still unclear as to where I stand on reform vs abolition of prisons. One thing is clear: The prison-industrial complex has got to go! And the best way for that to be accomplished is still being worked out in my brain: through a complete upheaval of the system or through intense paradigm shifts of the true purpose of our prison system or some other change completely, idk. All I know is that questioning these systems (especially in their inherent oppressive, racist nature) is necessary and I will continue to read/learn more. Shelby offers a great starting point of knowledge on this topic and I would definitely recommend it, especially to anyone that has never thought to question the validity of prisons.
September 14, 2024
I think a legitimate case can be made for prison abolition (especially given the fact that prison is never prescribed as a punishment under biblical civil law), but only in a world in which corporal and capital punishment is practiced judiciously. The author dismisses these forms of “retributive justice”, and never spends time engaging with the arguments for them. He spends much of the book engaging with the abolitionist arguments of Angela Davis, who entered into the abolitionist world through her own advocacy against “political prisoners”. The author does a fair job highlighting both the good and the unrealistic elements of her vision. Her utopian vision of abolition involves a world in which mental health treatment, “restorative justice” measures, and reconciliation replace a need for prisons. The author advocates an incremental approach in which some of these solutions are phased in and a moratorium is placed on much of the prison system, but he still maintains prison as a solution for violent crime. There is an interesting discussion about the privatization of prisons and the morality of corporate profit through prison labor. Overall, the secular vision of prison abolition seems impossible as it must deny the reality of natural human depravity. Crime cannot be curbed simply by therapy and positive reinforcement.
September 5, 2023
Shelby argued in 2016 in his book Dark Ghettos that black metropolitan neighborhoods with high levels of concentrated disadvantage should, on the grounds of justice, be abolished. He finds limits to the argument made by Angela Davis that prisons should be abolished. He favors thorough and comprehensive reform to abolition. He disagrees with abolitionists who insist that “reform efforts are not just ineffective but legitimize an inherently dehumanizing and unjust practice.” Shelby can imagine a world where we can rely on the police-court-prison apparatus, so long for instance that police were not armed with military-grade weapons and that prisons were not the primary form of crime control.” Shelby believes that incarceration “under the right circumstances and in conjunction with other less harmful practices” can be worth its attendant risks and costs.
Shelby’s book challenges public opinion about how best to combat crime and administer justice. He argues that thus public opinion was shaped by events in the late 1960s and early 1970s: “the volatile era of Black Power, when several Black radicals (many affiliated with the Black Panther Party) regarded themselves as effectively at war with the U.S. government. He names George Jackson, Huey Newton, Assata Shakur and Angela Davis as the leading proponents of this radical political vision. Soledad Brother: the Prison Letters of George Jackson stands out as a seminal work in this tradition. Shelby notes that Jackson rejects MLK’s nonviolent resistance “on the grounds that black people’s oppressors have no fellow feeling or sense of justice toward their subordinates. Along with Shakur, Jackson asserts that “black self-determination is a “basic right.” Shelby observes that black radicals trust neither the police nor the courts. Shelby writes :
… Prosecutors seek convictions on fabricated or flimsy evidence and use the threat of long sentences to extract unfair plea bargains. Judges deny bail or set it at unreachable heights. They also run trials in ways that favor the state’s case; and they impose excessive penalties upon conviction. Juries, when properly composed of peers, can sometimes be sympathetic. But more often they are overwhelmingly (if not exclusively white, strongly biased against black defendants, or manipulated by clever and unscrupulous prosecutors… (The Idea of Prison Abolition ,28)
Shelby quotes Jackson who claims that behind bars , he underwent a political transformation, from someone with a “criminal mentality” to someone with a “revolutionary mentality.” Jackson and Shakur agree that “prisons are used as weapons in a “genocidal war against Black and Third World people,” and argue that “those relegated to prison as an institutional site of punitive incarceration (for example, San Quentin) [should be considered] “prisoners of war.” Prisons, according to Davis, “are often used to maintain an unjust status quo and to put down any significant political resistance. All three (Jackson, Shakur, and Davis) “set out to demonstrate that repression through incarceration.”
Shelby agrees with Davis that the United States grossly overuses punitive incarceration. He favors using “fines and property confiscation, community service and other work assignments, restitution and reparation, electronic monitoring, home confinement, supervised probation, and the loss of certain privileges (for example, suspension of driver’s license) for most criminal offenses. Shelby rejects the incapacitation argument for incarceration in most instances. He writes in Chapter 2 that “imprisonment cannot be permissibly imposed without satisfying due process requirements– just searches, freedom from coerced confessions, habeas corpus, rights to defend oneself against charges, access to legal counsel, impartial trials, fair sentences, opportunities to appeal court judgments, and so on.”
In Chapter 4, Shelby entertains the idea of nonprofit prison privatization to expand non-carceral alternatives. He recognizes that an unintended consequence could be exploitation in commercial bail agreements and profit from electronic monitoring technology. He posits that “no one should gain financially from the suffering caused by imprisonment” For-profit prisons have no incentive to rehabilitate prisoners and a perverse incentive to promote crime and criminality. A non-profit private incarceration facility could also be used to hold those charged with crimes but not yet convicted. The private organization could be held responsible for custodial care and for ensuring that prisoners appear for trial. Shelby insists that in order to reduce reliance on coercion and violence in the facility , it might be wise to permit only nonviolent offenders to be admitted to a private prison.
As an advocate for reform, he offers very specific next steps: 1 ) use-of-force rules and procedures could be altered with serious penalties for officers who fail to comply, including criminal prosecution; 2) certain uses of force (for example, chokeholds and other neck restraints) could be strictly prohibited; 3)reentry and reintegration conditions in wider society could be reformed in such a way that he general public is no longer indifferent to the mistreatment of prisoners; 4) mental healthcare should be available to all, affordable substance abuse treatment should be available to all; 5) restorative and transformative justice alternatives should be adopted to address interpersonal violence without sending people to prison. Shelby is not naive enough to imagine an end to crime. He does offer however a pragmatic alternative to mass incarceration.
Shelby’s book challenges public opinion about how best to combat crime and administer justice. He argues that thus public opinion was shaped by events in the late 1960s and early 1970s: “the volatile era of Black Power, when several Black radicals (many affiliated with the Black Panther Party) regarded themselves as effectively at war with the U.S. government. He names George Jackson, Huey Newton, Assata Shakur and Angela Davis as the leading proponents of this radical political vision. Soledad Brother: the Prison Letters of George Jackson stands out as a seminal work in this tradition. Shelby notes that Jackson rejects MLK’s nonviolent resistance “on the grounds that black people’s oppressors have no fellow feeling or sense of justice toward their subordinates. Along with Shakur, Jackson asserts that “black self-determination is a “basic right.” Shelby observes that black radicals trust neither the police nor the courts. Shelby writes :
… Prosecutors seek convictions on fabricated or flimsy evidence and use the threat of long sentences to extract unfair plea bargains. Judges deny bail or set it at unreachable heights. They also run trials in ways that favor the state’s case; and they impose excessive penalties upon conviction. Juries, when properly composed of peers, can sometimes be sympathetic. But more often they are overwhelmingly (if not exclusively white, strongly biased against black defendants, or manipulated by clever and unscrupulous prosecutors… (The Idea of Prison Abolition ,28)
Shelby quotes Jackson who claims that behind bars , he underwent a political transformation, from someone with a “criminal mentality” to someone with a “revolutionary mentality.” Jackson and Shakur agree that “prisons are used as weapons in a “genocidal war against Black and Third World people,” and argue that “those relegated to prison as an institutional site of punitive incarceration (for example, San Quentin) [should be considered] “prisoners of war.” Prisons, according to Davis, “are often used to maintain an unjust status quo and to put down any significant political resistance. All three (Jackson, Shakur, and Davis) “set out to demonstrate that repression through incarceration.”
Shelby agrees with Davis that the United States grossly overuses punitive incarceration. He favors using “fines and property confiscation, community service and other work assignments, restitution and reparation, electronic monitoring, home confinement, supervised probation, and the loss of certain privileges (for example, suspension of driver’s license) for most criminal offenses. Shelby rejects the incapacitation argument for incarceration in most instances. He writes in Chapter 2 that “imprisonment cannot be permissibly imposed without satisfying due process requirements– just searches, freedom from coerced confessions, habeas corpus, rights to defend oneself against charges, access to legal counsel, impartial trials, fair sentences, opportunities to appeal court judgments, and so on.”
In Chapter 4, Shelby entertains the idea of nonprofit prison privatization to expand non-carceral alternatives. He recognizes that an unintended consequence could be exploitation in commercial bail agreements and profit from electronic monitoring technology. He posits that “no one should gain financially from the suffering caused by imprisonment” For-profit prisons have no incentive to rehabilitate prisoners and a perverse incentive to promote crime and criminality. A non-profit private incarceration facility could also be used to hold those charged with crimes but not yet convicted. The private organization could be held responsible for custodial care and for ensuring that prisoners appear for trial. Shelby insists that in order to reduce reliance on coercion and violence in the facility , it might be wise to permit only nonviolent offenders to be admitted to a private prison.
As an advocate for reform, he offers very specific next steps: 1 ) use-of-force rules and procedures could be altered with serious penalties for officers who fail to comply, including criminal prosecution; 2) certain uses of force (for example, chokeholds and other neck restraints) could be strictly prohibited; 3)reentry and reintegration conditions in wider society could be reformed in such a way that he general public is no longer indifferent to the mistreatment of prisoners; 4) mental healthcare should be available to all, affordable substance abuse treatment should be available to all; 5) restorative and transformative justice alternatives should be adopted to address interpersonal violence without sending people to prison. Shelby is not naive enough to imagine an end to crime. He does offer however a pragmatic alternative to mass incarceration.
August 31, 2025
In many ways this is a thoughtful book. Mr. Shelby tries to approach the problem of prisons with an open mind, considering abolition a live option. He treats Angela Davis as a serious scholar, as she deserves. But still I think that he assumes his conclusion that we have to have prisons. He doesn't have the courage to discard old ideas and think outside of the iron-barred box. Deep down in his heart he believes that prisons are necessary for general and specific deterrence of crime. But apart from his gut belief that it must be true, he provides no evidence. Nobody thinks that the threat of prison will deter crimes of passion or politically motivated crimes. But I also think that there is not much deterrent effect on career criminals or financial cheats. The cat burglar will burgle regardless; the con man will con. I don't think that that a lot more people will take up these professions if the risk of going to prison is removed. Bernie Madoff may have had a few sleepless nights when he worried about getting caught and going to prison, but that didn't stop him. There are other rationales for prison - retribution against people who have transgressed, rehabilitation, protecting society from incorrigible criminals by isolating them behind a big wall, but even prison advocates know that those arguments are weak, so they keep coming back to deterrence. In theory we could have kinder, gentler prisons as Mr. Shelby suggests, but that is never going to happen in the real world. It's more likely that we'll find a way to abolish them. We need to have consequences for anti-social behavior, but it doesn't need to be the meatgrinder of our current criminal justice and penal system, which makes a mockery of justice. It's not even such a good mechanism for social control of poor people. If you believe Foucault's analysis that prisons are manifestations of the modalities of power, that they are the way that society controls its poor, then we should get rid of them because they don't do such a good job of that, at least not anymore. We have only dabbled with the possibilities of alternative justice systems and technological methods for confinement and control without prisons. As currently imagined they have their limitations and flaws, but unless we seriously try them out, we'll never be able to make them better. They can't be worse than prisons.
In the end despite his good intentions, Mr. Shelby becomes another apologist for an indefensible regime of oppression. Prisons serve no useful social purpose, they cause much suffering, they are vehicles for the worst kind of racism, and they degrade the humanity of the people on both sides of the bars. Why would we want to perpetuate this kind of system, particularly when meaningful reform is not a realistic alternative?
In the end despite his good intentions, Mr. Shelby becomes another apologist for an indefensible regime of oppression. Prisons serve no useful social purpose, they cause much suffering, they are vehicles for the worst kind of racism, and they degrade the humanity of the people on both sides of the bars. Why would we want to perpetuate this kind of system, particularly when meaningful reform is not a realistic alternative?
December 14, 2025
a really good book of philosophy, would recommend to anyone who wants an example of well written modern (analytical) political philosophy. really interesting topic, attentively discussed, and makes a very strong argument - I'm not 100% convinced but it's hard to say why.
I think he mainly focused on abolitionists like Davis who want to get rid of prisons as part of a wider project to make society more just. I'm not sure he gives abolition enough of a chance given that alternative justice systems are already being developed (e.g. in communities who can't trust the police) and we can't know if they'll be feasible without researching them more. so while I think he makes a good point that activists shouldn't get too caught up in abolition when reform is more necessary, I myself probably think both campaigns should happen in tandem.
I think he mainly focused on abolitionists like Davis who want to get rid of prisons as part of a wider project to make society more just. I'm not sure he gives abolition enough of a chance given that alternative justice systems are already being developed (e.g. in communities who can't trust the police) and we can't know if they'll be feasible without researching them more. so while I think he makes a good point that activists shouldn't get too caught up in abolition when reform is more necessary, I myself probably think both campaigns should happen in tandem.
June 8, 2023
Educative and thought provoking.
Based on the long and brutal history of racial injustice and the sufferings of racial minorities in the
US, this book draws on ideas of prison abolitionists such as Angela Davis and was a very good introduction to the development of prison abolitionism and different schools of thoughts on the matter.
Shelby is not an abolitionist but opposes retribution and advocates improvement in social justices in the whole society. But he argues prisons can potentially work to control crime, even if the current system is deeply unjust.
Interesting mentions of economic liberty. pacifism, rational agent assumption, transformative justice, which can each be looked at in greater details, too.
Based on the long and brutal history of racial injustice and the sufferings of racial minorities in the
US, this book draws on ideas of prison abolitionists such as Angela Davis and was a very good introduction to the development of prison abolitionism and different schools of thoughts on the matter.
Shelby is not an abolitionist but opposes retribution and advocates improvement in social justices in the whole society. But he argues prisons can potentially work to control crime, even if the current system is deeply unjust.
Interesting mentions of economic liberty. pacifism, rational agent assumption, transformative justice, which can each be looked at in greater details, too.
March 15, 2023
didn't really like the style -- very clear, but kind of boring -- and didn't find his argument super convincing. it depended heavily on the deterrent effect of punishment, which imo is at best an open empirical question, definitely not a safe philosophical foundation, and didn't engage with victims' experiences at all. also had trouble caring about the nuances of incarceration since he would agree on 99% of the action that should be taken now. did find the suggestion that abolition is a "framework for ethical reflection" interesting.
April 12, 2024
I suggest an alternate title, "Why Angela Davis Is Smarter Than Me."
He starts by saying how he isn't looking for the Platonic Ideal of a prison and then spends the entire book talking how prisons could work in an ideal world. It's boring, lazy, lacks insight, and is really just an exercise for first-year students to pick apart incomplete arguments.
I did the audiobook, and the narrator was excellent, so that was good.
He starts by saying how he isn't looking for the Platonic Ideal of a prison and then spends the entire book talking how prisons could work in an ideal world. It's boring, lazy, lacks insight, and is really just an exercise for first-year students to pick apart incomplete arguments.
I did the audiobook, and the narrator was excellent, so that was good.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 4, 2024
I read this book with a reading group at work. I would recommend it for anyone who is interested in the philosophical arguments of prison abolition and the counter-arguments. My co-workers were frustrated with the philosophical approach to this because he didn't bring in the empirical facts about prisons which undergirds so much of the argument for abolition. That said, I would still recommend it.
July 12, 2024
Incredible companion to Angela Davis's work, but I do think it's funny that Shelby was afraid of the intellectualizing instead of praxis and ends the book with a slogan
(intellectualizing isn't the right word but I can't recall what it is)
(intellectualizing isn't the right word but I can't recall what it is)
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