“This shrinks our imagination so that we’re not thinking about other solutions other than locking people up in some way or another.”Īlthough conversations about police and prison abolition are arguably more widespread than ever before, one group is still left behind. “Even though prisons have failed to keep us safe, we as a society have been conditioned to turn to more policing, more prisons, and more punishment as a response to every social and political problem,” Law tells Dazed. These include the myth that prisons offer rehabilitation that race has nothing to do with mass incarceration that those in prison don’t resist or organise and that prisons are the only way to address violent crime.
In it, she dismantles 21 of the most persistent myths about prisons – many of which have been drilled into us from childhood. Her new book, Prisons Make Us Safer: And 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration, is no exception. As well as helping women in prison develop their writing skills, Law has written several books, essays, and articles about the dangers of mass incarceration and the ways in which we can resist it. Rising up against the violent, racist, transphobic, homophobic, and misognyistic institution that has abused its authoritative power time and time again, protesters began to challenge the disturbing norm of global mass incarceration, and called for an abolition of the system as we know it.įor journalist and author Victoria Law, this has been her focus for the last two decades.
As Black Lives Matter protests swept the world last summer, one rallying cry rang louder than the rest: ‘ Defund the police’.