For Abolition: Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics

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According to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) 'Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.' Connecting the politics of abolition to wider emancipatory struggles for liberation and social justice, this book argues that penal abolitionism should be understood as an important public critical pedagogy and philosophy of hope that can help to reinvigorate democracy and set society on a pathway towards living in a world without prisons. For Abolition draws upon the socialist ethics of dignity, empathy, freedom and paradigm of life to systematically critique imprisonment as a state institution characterised by 'social death'. Cover About the author The author of the Foreword Acknowledgements Copyright and publication details Table of Contents Dedication Publisher’s note Table of Cases Endorsements Foreword - Joe Sim Preface The Prison Puzzle and Socialist Ethics: Making the Case for Abolition Prisons: the puzzle we cannot solve Prison labour: enforced idleness or penal slavery? Education: learning new crimes or reinforcing failure? Relationships on the outside: intensifying pains or natal alienation? Relationships on the inside: isolation or forced relationality? Taking responsibility: coerced sense of duty or no moral choices? Life and wellbeing: failed-treatments or undermining health? A place of death: ‘negative ethics’ The ethics of life: ‘affirmative ethics’ Conclusion: socialist ethics, human rights and abolitionist activism Abolitionist Ethical Hermeneutics: Hearing and Interpreting Voice Interpreting prisoner narratives in situational context Negative consequentialism Discourse ethics Virtue ethics Libertarian socialist liberation ethics Abolitionist ethical hermeneutics Critical judgement When the estranged Other cannot speak Six conditions of speaking Conclusion: learning to learn Invisible Brutal Hands: The Problem of Prison Officer Violence Legitimacy and visibility Which voices are heard? The prisoners’ tale: prison officer violence in historical context The prison officers’ tale: recollections and justifications Turning a blind eye Masking violence Normalisation Payback Pathological prisoners Conclusion Phantom Faces at the Window: Prisons, Dignity and Moral Exclusion Face and acknowledgement Moral inclusion Moral exclusion Width of imprisonment The indignities of prison life Ethical questions Prison is Not a Home: Estrangement and the Prison Zone of Abandonment There is no place like home Warehousing the unwanted Institutionally-structured violence Legitimate abandonment Solidarity with the unwanted Falling Softly to Your Grave: Time Consciousness and the Death-bound Subject Time and the death-bound subject Freedom, relationships, place and the lived experience of prison time Psychological survival — coping with prison time? Hurtling towards death consciousness Abolitionism as a Philosophy of Hope: System ‘Inside-Outsiders’, Freedom and the Reclaiming of Democracy Pedagogy beyond the neo-liberal university Organic collective intellectuals Reclaiming democracy We should hear diverse voices and write what we like Researching and platforming subjugated and marginalised voices Expert witness to the courts Testifying for freedom in official submissions to the state Contesting state-corporate power Selective engagement with the existing media and creating new forms of media Building communities and the production of insurgent knowledge Freedom, hope, and praxis Ordinary Rebels, Everyone: Abolitionist Scholarship and the Struggle for Freedom Seven rules of engagement for activist scholars Challenging privilege Recognition and the relational dimension Accountability to the community Levelling up and capacity-building Consciousness-raising among the populace Building new alliances and power bloc based on difference Community spaces and the agora The encounter: penal abolitionism beyond safe[r] spaces Pies Not Prisons The encounter — Bickershaw social club Engaging in local politics Connecting with the local media An ethical encounter? The Abolitionist Imagination: Ethics of Empathy, Dignity and Life The motivational deficit and the pedagogy of freedom Empathy Dignity The paradigm of life Afterword A lost opportunity … But a world to win … Bibliography Index Against Imprisonment Back cover