ARE PRISONS OBSOLETE?

1. The U.S. population is less than five percent of the world’s total, but more than twenty percent of the world’s combined prison population can be claimed by the United States. Why do you think this is?

2. Is the prison an inevitable fact of life, or are there radical alternatives that ought to be considered?

3. Does most of your knowledge about prisons come from TV and movies? How has this impacted your perception about prisons?

4. What are strategies for restorative rather than exclusively punitive justice?

5. In what ways is the prison industrial complex similar to slavery?

6. Should private prisons exist? What do you think of the fact that private companies have a stake in retaining prisoners as long as possible (also occurs in public prisons as companies sell their products to public prisons as well)?

7. Should someone who is convicted of a felony permanently lose their rights?

8. Do our schools place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development? How can this be changed?

9. Should someone be imprisoned prior to their guilt or innocence being decided?

10. Is solitary confinement a form of torture? (Prisoners in “super-maximum” security prisons spend twenty-three hours a day in their cells, enduring extreme social isolation, enforced idleness, and extraordinarily limited recreational and educational opportunities.)

11. What do you think of the idea that deviant men are constructed as criminal while deviant women are constructed as insane? What is the difference between “criminal” and “insane”?

12. Should the prison’s goal be to rehabilitate and heal?

13. Davis describes how the demand for equality has often resulted in the supporting of women being mistreated in the same ways that men are mistreated in the prison system. While Davis focuses frequently on racism and sexism, would movements for justice potentially be more productive if the mission was justice for all rather than focusing on specific identity groups?

14. While more information is available than ever, does information/news/entertainment overload make it harder in some ways for certain injustices to get meaningful and lasting attention?

15. What do you think of the fact that while homicide rates have dropped, homicide stories have dramatically increased? What does this tell you about the way we perceive crime and various aspects of life in general?

16. Should prisons be more humane, habitable environments? How can this be accomplished?

17. Is life imprisonment more humane than capital punishment?

18. Should healthcare (including mental care) be free to all? Should everyone have access to effective, voluntary drug treatment programs?

19. Should drugs and sex work be decriminalized?

20. Is reparative justice a good alternative model of making justice (the lawbreaker not being seen as evil-minded but as a debtor whose human duty is to take responsibility for his or her acts and to assume the duty of repair)?

21. What did you think of the story on the last pages about the student who was stoned and stabbed to death in South Africa (parents forgave them and supported their amnesty petition)?

22. How might we benefit both individually and as society if we more frequently questioned why terrible things happen instead of simply reacting?