Talk:Are Prisons Obsolete?

Feedback from New Page Review process
I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Hello, thanks for the article. I wanted to say we need to be mindful of format - try to follow the layout and format for other books. Please use inline citations per MOS:CITE. Also there are sources available - it would be good to include references for the reviews of the book..

Bruxton (talk) 03:23, 18 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello Bruxton,
 * Apologies, I will try to clean this up as I go along trying to finish it. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by following the layout and format of other books? As a random example, the page for Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is organized as a general overview, a summary, and a section on reception. While I haven't added the section on reception yet, I suppose I should ask if there's a more fundamental problem with the structure that I'm just not clear on. I'll admit, I am... very new to Wikipedia, at least in the sense that I've only created two pages before and really don't "get" what I'm supposed to do beyond adding information about the texts. Any advice on how to brush up and overcome my ignorance would be apprepciated! David00131 (talk) 06:35, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi! I would start this chapter by mentioning that Davis explicitly states at the beginning of the chapter that bringing women into the conversation about jails wouldn't solve the paradigm of state punishment. It's important to put an emphasis on the shift of the prison system as a whole, while having a parallel conversation about the intersection of gender and prison.

I would also deep dive a bit more on the case of Assata Shakur. Her mere presence in car subjected her to not only convictions but also was subjected to twenty-four hours surveillance in a men’s prison and deprived her from any kind medical attention and physical and mental exercises for years during her custody. Yet, even if this case is particularly violent, other imprisoned women had similar treatments especially black women and Puerto Rican women. In my opinion, it’s important to highlight that women of color have similar individual stories of systemic prison violence.

I would add a section to your summary more linked to Davis’ abolitionist and transformative justice ideas. I would highlight that Davis defends that abolition requires a shift from punitive approaches to social problems towards transformative justice. I would add that she states that against the incarceration paradigm, a tool of social control and gender oppression, abolition is the only viable solution to the problems caused by the prison system. I would also mention that she argues that alternatives to incarceration, such as community-based programs, would better address the needs of women and that investments in education and employment opportunities would reduce the need for prisons in the first place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MCTransformative2023 (talk • contribs) 22:23, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I find this is a very good summary of Chapter 4 of Viola Davis' book "Are prisons obsolete?". I think a few changes could be made to bolster the summary.

First, there are a couple of typos throughout the text. For example, in the end of the first paragraph, there is missing a "w" for "women". Also, at the beginning of the second paragraph, there is a space that should be deleted between "w" and "ay".

Second, a few substantive changes could be made to further highlight the differential treatment of radicalized women in the prison system. This is correctly mentioned at the end of the first paragraph through the following passage: "Throughout the evolution of women in the prison system, certain reforms resulted in black and Native American women to be segregated from white omen, as well as being disproportionately sentenced to male prisons.[7] Passages by Lucia Zedner point also to a link between sentencing practices and the eugenics movement, as prison and lengthy sentences was a way to remove undesirable and "genetically inferior women from social circulation for as many of their child-bearing years as possible."[8]". Nevertheless, more nuance could be added. For instance, Davis writes how in the south of America, following the Civil War, black women continued to endure cruelties in prisons; neither their gender nor the forced labour they had to do was mitigated by their gender. Moreover, throughout the 20th century, black women were seen as less capable of moral reform in comparison to white women. For example, the cottage system, domestic training, and the like, were prison reforms reserved for white women. The summary of Chapter 4 could also further note the differential treatment of Indigenous (or "Native American") women in American prisons. For example, the statistics underscoring the disproportionate incarceration of Indigenous women could be provided. In Chapter 4, Davis shares the study of Luana Ross that argues how prisons "operate to keep Native Americans in a colonial situation" (p. 73). The statistics provided by Ross show how Indigenous women only represent 6% of the general population, but 25% of the prison population.

Overall, this is a strong summary of Davis' fourth chapter on the gendered structure of prisons but certain changes could be made to further bolster it. 2023justice (talk) 14:24, 13 April 2023 (UTC)