The proliferation of antiprison groups during the decade when this book was in progress indicates how many kinds of people understand that prison is not a building “over there” but a set of relationships that undermine rather than stabilize everyday lives everywhere. Unfortunately, many remedies proposed for the all-purpose use of prisons to solve social, political, and economic problems get caught in the logic of the system itself, such that a reform strengthens, rather than loosens, prison’s hold. In a sense, the professionalization of activism has made many committed people so specialized and entrapped by funding streams that they have become effectively deskilled when it comes to thinking and doing what matters most. What are the possibilities of nonreformist reform—of changes that, at the end of the day, unravel rather than widen the net of social control through criminalization?
The proliferation of antiprison groups during the decade when this book was in progress indicates how many kinds of people understand that prison is not a building “over there” but a set of relationships that undermine rather than stabilize everyday lives everywhere. Unfortunately, many remedies proposed for the all-purpose use of prisons to solve social, political, and economic problems get caught in the logic of the system itself, such that a reform strengthens, rather than loosens, prison’s hold. In a sense, the professionalization of activism has made many committed people so specialized and entrapped by funding streams that they have become effectively deskilled when it comes to thinking and doing what matters most. What are the possibilities of nonreformist reform—of changes that, at the end of the day, unravel rather than widen the net of social control through criminalization?