For Abolition

David Scott

Description

A systematic critique of imprisonment which challenges established views and myths. Examines why there still exists so much political and other misguided support for a long failing institution.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 05 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909976832
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

‘Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.’
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
Copyright and publication details
For Abolition: Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics
David Scott
ISBN 978-1-909976-82-5 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-909976-83-2 (Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-909976-84-9 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 2020 This work is the copyright of David Scott. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by the author in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
Cover design © 2020 Waterside Press by www.gibgob.com
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, BN23 6QH. Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
North American distribution Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. Tel: [phone]; [e-mail]
Cataloguing In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Ebook For Abolition is available as an ebook including via library models.
Published 2020 by
Waterside Press Ltd
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield on Loddon, Hook
Hampshire RG27 0JG.
Telephone [phone]
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
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For Abolition
Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics
David Scott
Table of Contents
About the author ix
The author of the Foreword ix
Acknowledgements x
Dedication xiii
Publisher’s note xiv
Table of Cases xv
Endorsements 17
Foreword 21
Preface 25 The Prison Puzzle and Socialist Ethics:
Making the Case for Abolition 33
Prisons: the puzzle we cannot solve 34
Prison labour: enforced idleness or penal slavery? 36
Education: learning new crimes or reinforcing failure? 37
Relationships on the outside: intensifying pains or natal alienation? 37
Relationships on the inside: isolation or forced relationality? 38
Taking responsibility: coerced sense of duty or no moral choices? 39
Life and wellbeing: failed-treatments or undermining health? 39
A place of death: ‘negative ethics’ 41
The ethics of life: ‘affirmative ethics’ 45
Conclusion: socialist ethics, human rights and abolitionist activism 48 Abolitionist Ethical Hermeneutics:
Hearing and Interpreting Voice 51
Interpreting prisoner narratives in situational context 54
Negative consequentialism 56
Discourse ethics 58
Virtue ethics 61
Libertarian socialist liberation ethics 63
Abolitionist ethical hermeneutics 65
Critical judgement 67
When the estranged Other cannot speak 68
Six conditions of speaking 72
Conclusion: learning to learn 73 Invisible Brutal Hands:
The Problem of Prison Officer Violence 75
Legitimacy and visibility 77
Which voices are heard? 79
The prisoners’ tale: prison officer violence in historical context 80
The prison officers’ tale: recollections and justifications 92
Turning a blind eye 92
Masking Violence 93
Normalisation 95
Payback 96
Pathological prisoners 97
Conclusion 97 Phantom Faces at the Window:
Prisons, Dignity and Moral Exclusion 99
Face and acknowledgement 100
Moral inclusion 102
Moral exclusion 105
Width of imprisonment 107
The indignities of prison life 109
Ethical questions 120 Prison is Not a Home:
Estrangement and the Prison Zone of Abandonment 121
There is no place like home 123
Warehousing the unwanted 125
Institutionally-structured violence 127
Legitimate abandonment 129
Solidarity with the unwanted 136 Falling Softly to Your Grave:
Time Consciousness and the Death-bound Subject 139
Time and the death-bound subject 141
Freedom, relationships, place and the lived experience of prison time 144
Psychological survival — coping with prison time? 153
Hurtling towards death consciousness 156 Abolitionism as a Philosophy of Hope:
System ‘Inside-Outsiders’, Freedom and the Reclaiming of Democracy 161
Pedagogy beyond the neo-liberal university 165
Organic collective intellectuals 167
Reclaiming democracy 171
We should hear diverse voices and write what we like 172
Researching and platforming subjugated and marginalised voices 173
Expert witness to the courts 175
Testifying for freedom in official submissions to the state 176
Contesting state-corporate power 178
Selective engagement with the existing media and creating new forms of media 179
Building communities and the production of insurgent knowledge 181
Freedom, hope, and praxis 182 Ordinary Rebels, Everyone:
Abolitionist Scholarship and the Struggle for Freedom 185
Seven rules of engagement for activist scholars 188
Challenging privilege 189
Recognition and the relational dimension 190
Accountability to the community 191
Levelling up and capacity-building 191
Consciousness-raising among the populace 192
Building new alliances and power bloc based on difference 192
Community spaces and the agora 192
The encounter: penal abolitionism beyond safe[r] spaces 193
Pies Not Prisons 195
The encounter — Bickershaw social club 196
Engaging in local politics 201
Connecting with the local media 203
An ethical encounter? 204 The Abolitionist Imagination:
Ethics of Empathy, Dignity and Life 207
The motivational deficit and the pedagogy of freedom 210
Empathy 213
Dignity 216
The paradigm of life 223
Afterword 231
A lost opportunity … 231
But a world to win … 233
Bibliography 237
Index 255
About the author
Dr David Scott works at The Open University. He has published widely on prisons and punishment. His books include Why Prison? (2013, Cambridge University Press), Against Imprisonment (2018, Waterside Press) and the International Handbook of Penal Abolition (2020, Routledge).
The author of the Foreword
Joe Sim is Professor of Criminology and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Crime, Criminalisation and Social Exclusion at Liverpool John Moores University. His books include Punishment and Prisons , Medical Power in Prisons and British Prisons (with Mike Fitzgerald). He is a trustee of the charity INQUEST, which campaigns around contentious deaths inside and outside of state custody.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of my excellent colleagues at The Open University for their encouragement and support over the last five years, especially Dan McCulloch, Deborah Drake, Adam Nightingale, Amanda Vaughan, Vickie Cooper, Carly Speed, Teresa Willis, Gerry Mooney, Lynne Copson, Lee Curley, Gabi Kent, Eleni Dimou, Sian Hamlett, Monika Zulauf, Kier-Irwin Rogers, Tony Murphy, Peter Redman, Alison Penn, Steve Tombs, Avi Bouki, Ross Ferguson, Julia Downes and Louise Westmarland. Thanks also for the support of my friends and colleagues at the University of Toronto, Canada, especially Mariana Valverde, Audrey Macklin, Ayobami Laniyonu and Ana Ballesteros, where in the fall of 2019 as Visiting Professor at the Centre for Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies I wrote and delivered papers on three chapters of this book. Thanks also to the kindness of Justin Piché, Kelly Struthers Montford, Chloe Taylor and Maeve McMahon who helped make my stay in Ontario a wonderful experience and for also inviting me to speak on topics and chapters included in this book. Friends, colleagues and students at the University of Padova, Italy, have on numerous occasions in the last six years greeted me with enormous hospitality; and a number of chapters in this book were first delivered as lectures on the MA Critical Criminology Programme. Thanks also to friends and colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University, especially Kathryn Chadwick, Becky Clarke, Craig Fletcher, Sam Fletcher and Patrick Williams for all of their kindness and support and inviting me back again and again to discuss abolitionist ideas with students over the last eight years.
Enormous gratitude to Mary Cater and Nazir Ansari for being great friends and for sharing their home with me when I am in Stony Stratford. Many thanks are also due to my family and friends for their constant encouragement, especially John Roland Scott, Ben Scott and Ian Scott. Much appreciation should also go to Flossy ‘Mercury’ Scott (my dog) for keeping me constantly entertained and taking me on long and interesting walks in and around Ramsbottom, all of which proved ever so helpful for the writing process. Thanks also to Corina Rogerson, Emma Bell and Joe Sim for reading through the full manuscript of the book before submission to the publishers; and to Bryan Gibson and all at Waterside Press for their encouragement and dedication in producing For Abolition (and the previous volume Against Imprisonment).
I would like to thank all the socialist inspired activists engaged in struggles against inequalities and the penal industrial complex in the United Kingdom with whom I have campaigned over the last few years — I salute you for your commitment, solidarity and direct engagement — and very much hope the arguments and evidence cited in this book are of assistance in the struggle for social justice. I would also like to acknowledge all my friends and colleagues in the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control. In particular, thank you Chris Allen, Kym Atkinson, Anne Alvesalo-Kuusi, Giles Barrett Alana Barton, Anette Ballinger, Vanessa Barker, Andrea Beckmann, Emma Bell, Monish Bhatia, Michelle Brown, Tony Broxson, Jonny Burnett, Tony Bunyan, Victoria Canning , Bree Carlton, Eamonn Carrabine, Mick Cavadino, Kathryn Chadwick, Gilles Chantraine, Becky Clarke, Roy Coleman, Deborah Coles, Mary Corcoran, Michael Coyle, Janet Cunliffe, Tom Daems, Pamela Davies, James Deane, John Dennison, Andrew Douglas, Anne Egelund, Yarin Eski, J