“Prisons Make Us Safer”

And 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration

By: Victoria Law

Narrated by: Melissa Moran

Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

An accessible guide for activists, educators, and all who are interested in understanding how the prison system oppresses communities and harms individuals.

The United States incarcerates more of its residents than any other nation. Though home to five percent of the global population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners - a total of over two million people. This number continues to steadily rise. Over the past 40 years, the number of people behind bars in the United States has increased by 500 percent.

Journalist Victoria Law explains how racism and social control were the catalysts for mass incarceration and have continued to be its driving force: from the post-Civil War laws that states passed to imprison former slaves, to the laws passed under the “War Against Drugs” campaign that disproportionately imprison Black people. She breaks down these complicated issues into four main parts: 

1. The rise and cause of mass incarceration 

2. Myths about prison 

3. Misconceptions about incarcerated people 

4. How to end mass incarceration

Through carefully conducted research and interviews with incarcerated people, Law identifies the 21 key myths that propel and maintain mass incarceration, including: 

• The system is broken and we simply need some reforms to fix it 
• Incarceration is necessary to keep our society safe 
• Prison is an effective way to get people into drug treatment 
• Private prison corporations drive mass incarceration

“Prisons Make Us Safer” is a necessary guide for all who are interested in learning about the cause and rise of mass incarceration and how we can dismantle it.

©2021 Victoria Law (P)2021 Beacon Press

Critic reviews

“Convincing, creatively effective arguments for the dismantling of mass incarceration.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Law has offered us a very important tool. Her careful and accessible analysis, her feminist approach, and her methodical demystification of widely held views about incarceration enable precisely the kind of understanding we need at this moment.” (Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz)

“Law brilliantly uses facts, figures, and moving and enraging stories from incarcerated people to bring to light important and misunderstood facets of our singularly massive criminal legal system.... An essential book that demands attention and action.” (Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison)

8/10 eye-opening book

I found this book about the problems and history and options for our criminal justice system fascinating. read it in one sitting.

the author is a criminal legal legal system activist so of course there is a strong emphasis there and bias. however this book is well researched and includes numerous studies as well as first-hand accounts of people who have spent time incarcerated.

this book does not claim to have all the answers, but it does highlight many of the struggles and institutionalized problems with our prison system.

Good Dialogue

excellent way to look at the issue of prisons and the work they do or dont do. each chapter posed for questions and answers on prison and reform. well thought out and delivered.

Great overview then deep dives

This is the Bible on everything the USA does completely backwards, expensive, and ineffective, in the realm of human detainment. A MUST for anyone into social justice, justice (or more aptly injustice” and the myriad macabre stories of reel people being oppressed by a system long broken and slow to chang, fueled by political campaign talking points, myths about incarceration, and the wayward legislating that continues to result in mass incarceration, eschew peer reviewed research studies on real rehabilitation, with often tragic results.

Digestible, approachable, understandable

I really enjoyed the structure of the book and how Law provides alternative methods of restoring justice in a humanistic, knowledgeable, and practical ways. I look forward to reading more of her work.

Leftist propaganda

Try to make a case for no prisons and makes criminals look like heroes
Never addressed the victims of crime and the impact on law abiding citizens.
Trash.

Slanted and biased throughout

This book was definitely hard to get through as it was so blatantly biased in every argument it made. Do NOT read this book expecting a reasoned analysis of the justice system.

She tries to make it sound like a scientific study, but it's every anti-police argument coupled with taking anecdotal statements from convicted criminals as if they're hard evidence. Her bent is made clear almost from the beginning when she states that she won't refer to prisoners as prisoners, criminals, or convicts.

Her arguments are flawed and repetitive. For instance, she repeatedly says, "prisons don't help prevent murder or rape" because the criminal is incarcerated AFTER having committed violence. She completely ignores the fact that locking up criminals does prevent them from committing more violence (at least against innocents).

Further, in every discussion, she tells these tales of woe about various criminals, but never bothers to mention the details of the brutal crimes that landed them in jail and the things they did in jail to get in trouble. All that is conveniently ignored. She even acts shocked that parole boards would consider the original crime that criminals committed in the first place.