What Is a Prison?

Abstract

Tommie Shelby’s 2022 book The Idea of Prison Abolition sets out to compile and rearticulate the arguments for and against prison abolition--using Angela Davis's works as the sole source texts. In considering the arguments, he concludes that it is not necessary to abolish prisons and instead endorses reform.

In this book review, I argue that Shelby’s most helpful contribution in the book is not his analysis of whether prisons should be abolished but rather his elemental definition of incarceration. To know what to abolish and when we have abolished it, we need to define what we mean by "prison." I evaluate and extend his definition by culling some elements, such that the remaining elements are: "involuntary confinement," "in an enclosed space," "away from the general public;" and adding an element, "for a continuous amount of time." I also add to these elements a list of harms that imprisonment inevitably causes.

Keywords: prison, prison abolition, book review