Today, more than two million people inhabit U.S. prisons, jails, youth facilities, and immigrant detention centers.  Due to this, Angela Davis believes that the question of “whether the prison has become an obsolete institution” has become a pressing matter.  Prisons in a way have emerged into a “prison industrial complex” because prison building and operation attract vast amounts of capital.  Therefore, the question of whether prisons are needed stands as an important issue.

     Davis states that the “most difficult and urgent challenge today is that of creatively exploring new terrains of justice, where the prison no longer serves as our major anchor.”  Although she wants to seek alternatives to prisons, she does not provide many examples of what can be done.  Instead, Davis expresses why prisons should be done away with and supports herself with facts. 

     Davis believes that prisons are racist institutions that operate in “clandestine ways.”  An interesting point that she presents is the damage brought on by the expansion of the prison system in the schools located in poor communities of color that replicate prison structures.  Schools that place a greater value on security and discipline than on knowledge, children are attending prep schools for prison.  Many historians acknowledge the post-Civil War institutions of punishment in the South.  However, they fail to pinpoint the extent to which “racism colored commonsense understandings of the circumstances surrounding the wholesale criminalization of black communities.”

     The rest of the book discusses gender in the prison system and the prison industrial complex.  At the beginning of the twenty- first century, women’s prisons started to look like their male counterparts.  The prison’s alleged goal of rehabilitation has been displaced by incapacitation as the major objective of imprisonment.  Davis then concludes with the relationship between the military and prison industrial complex and how both ”generate huge profits from processes of social destruction.

     In her book, Davis brings up some interesting statistics, however I do not believe that we can do away with the prison system.  On the other hand, I do believe there is some much needed reform initiatives that need to be taken.  Something that we must work for as a society is to achieve full equality.  Especially in prisons and the judicial system, there must be fair treatment for all people.  We should also allow prisoners to educate themselves.  Education itself can be used for rehabilitation to help inmates take blame for their crimes and help them get back on track.  We must also try to distinguish between crimes and set fair sentences that are enforced.  These are only a few of the reforms that I believe need to be taken but even these will help to transform our present institutions.