When Obama was elected president, a prisoner said one black man in the White House doesn’t make up for one million black men in the Big House.” 

― Angela Y. Davis

Beginning with the construction and creation of prisons, there is a long history of individuals who have fought for prison reform and/ or prison abolishment. There has since been a divide in society on how to punish criminals as well as how to help prisoners maintain their humanity. Other issues begin to rise, how do we satisfy the crime victims’ desire for justice and revenge, while the criminal justice system figures out how to give convicts a second chance in society. Individuals would argue that society needs to think about the victim and not the criminal. However, those who are convicted can fall victim to a system that does not see their innocence. Rather the system takes the “criminals” skin color, sex, ethnicity, etc. into consideration with sentencing and displacement, but no one seems to discuss this specific issue. Someone’s chances of being free are fairly slim. Society can agree that criminals should be punished, but the disagreements arise from the differing ideas on length sentences, how inmates should be treated, and mass incarceration. Mass incarceration is one of the issues prisons are facing, this plays a role in why prison reform is necessary. 

Angela Y. Davis is an African-American activist, feminist, an academic, and a writer. Davis was born in 1944 in the southern city of Birmingham, Alabama. In the year of 1970, there was an attempt by Jonathan Jackson in a California courthouse in which Jackson tried to free the Soledad Brothers resulting in three men being shot dead including a judge. The Soledad Brothers were three African-American inmates at Soledad State Prison in California accused of killing a prison guard. This relates to Angela Davis because she was prosecuted for conspiracy. Then, she was jailed for eighteen months before being acquitted on her charges in a federal trial. While facing her time in prison, Davis wrote and spoke on political injustice within the United States. 

A photo of young Angela Davis with her iconic Afro. 

Once Davis left prison she spoke of issues within the prison system, judicial system, and spoke about her time served as well. Davis formed ideas in the minds of young people during the early 1960s and late ‘70s, that prisons play a part in our imagination. Davis advocates for the abolishment in prisons because she believes that prisons worsen societal harms instead of helping. It is hard to envision a society that does not have a creation of placement for individuals who commit crimes. In today’s society, we rely on these places to pack in millions of individuals who are deemed a “threat” to society. In the Harvard Gazette, Angela Davis stated, “The prison is considered so natural and so normal that it is extremely hard to imagine life without them.” With abolishing prisons, it serves the society to further inspect larger issues America faces, such as poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, mental health issues, etc. Society should stop focusing on putting individuals behind bars, and take a look into how societal norms placed these individuals there. 

Davis brings to question about the increase in mass incarceration and the proliferation of prisons, as well as the impacts in the lives of minorities who are incarcerated. In minority communities, Davis stated that people have a “greater chance of going to prison than of getting a decent education.” The reason behind why prisons play a part in our imagination is because individuals form their own reality about prisons, that they serve the public in trapping people who are “evildoers.” Rather than taking into consideration what human rights issues inmates face. Then, society will turn a blind eye to the issues behind prisons. Angela Davis makes significant points about prisons and the issues surrounding incarceration. Davis’ role in prison reform sparked the minds of individuals to further investigate what exactly happens behind the doors of prisons all across America.