Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture was published by Seven Stories Press in 2005, in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The book takes the form of an extended interview (conducted by Eduardo Mendieta) in which Davis connects the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers to the systematic abuse of prisoners within the American domestic prison system.
Davis’s argument is that Abu Ghraib was not an aberration but a revelation: the techniques of humiliation, sexual degradation, and physical abuse documented in the photographs were not invented in Iraq but imported from American prisons, where similar practices had been routine for decades. The shock that Americans expressed at the Abu Ghraib photographs, Davis suggests, was not shock at the techniques themselves but shock at seeing them applied to prisoners who were supposed to be “different” from the people Americans were accustomed to seeing degraded.
The book’s title draws on W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of “abolition democracy” — the idea, developed in Black Reconstruction (1935), that the abolition of slavery was not sufficient to create democracy; what was needed was the creation of new institutions (education, healthcare, land reform, political participation) that would make genuine democratic citizenship possible. Davis applies this concept to the prison: abolishing prisons is not enough; what is needed is the creation of the institutions — economic, educational, therapeutic — that would make prisons unnecessary.
Collecting Abolition Democracy
First edition (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2005): Trade paperback original.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $15–$30
- Signed: $50–$100