Prison Scholar and Activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore on the Case for Abolition

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2020

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is prison necessary? That’s a central question in the work of longtime prison abolitionist and well-known prison scholar, Ruth Wilson Gilmore. A co-founder of activist organization Critical Resistance, Gilmore’s seminal book “Golden Gulag” analyzed California’s role in propelling both the prison building boom and tough-on-crime sentencing in the U.S. Today, criminal justice reform is under a brighter spotlight, as calls to defund the police have increased and as jails and prisons became hotspots for COVID-19 with effects rippling through surrounding communities. Gilmore joins us to share her thoughts on the movement to defund police and the case for abolishing prisons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:00.0	From KQBD Public Radio in San Francisco, I'm Mina Kim.
1:03.4	Coming up on forum, is prison necessary?
1:09.2	That's a central question in the work of longtime prison abolitionist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore. Her seminal book, Golden Gulag, analyzed California's
1:12.8	role in propelling both the prison building boom and tough-on-crime sentencing. Now, with a spotlight on
1:19.0	prisons as hotspots for COVID-19 and on our criminal justice system with calls to defund the police,
1:25.5	Gilmore joins us to talk about the case for prison abolition.
1:29.3	Join us.
1:29.7	This is Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We hear these days that California's once dangerously overcrowded prisons have stabilized and that its population of some 100,000 is at a 30-year low after court rulings and new laws and policies. But the question that longtime prison
2:02.5	abolitionist and scholar Ruthie Wilson Gilmore wants to ask is if prison is necessary at all.
	...

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