Abby Cunniff and Critical Resistance co-founder Ruth Wilson Gilmore argue that California’s effort to reform prisons is a dead end; what we really need is to close prisons and protect incarcerated people. Check out this must-read op-ed in Prism.
“We challenge the reasoning behind Newsom’s expansion and stand with the LAO: California should be closing prisons and figuring out all the ways to decarcerate people still locked up. By contrast, the so-called California model, with new names and frills, is a repetition of every single prison expansion or enhancement since San Quentin opened in 1852. Every new prison purported to solve the problems produced by earlier prisons. We should know by now that the problem is prison, even a Nordic version.”