Tommie Shelby, "The Idea of Prison Abolition" (Princeton UP, 2022)
An interview with Tommie Shelby
December 30, 2022
1 hr 11 min
303
Full
693 of 1,730
Episode 303 · December 30, 2022
Tommie Shelby, "The Idea of Prison Abolition" (Princeton UP, 2022)
0:00 / 1:11:02
Excerpt playback isn’t available for this episode — use the full-episode link.
Search the Record
Moment search isn’t open for this episode yet
When it opens, you’ll be able to type any phrase and jump straight to the second it was said.
American Politics Episodes Around December 30, 2022
Episode 693 of 1,730 — walk the feed in the order it was published.
Tommie Shelby, "The Idea of Prison Abolition" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Summary
By any reasonable metric, prisons as they exist in the United States and in many other countries are normatively unacceptable. What is the proper moral response to this? Can prisons and the practices surrounding incarceration feasibly be reformed, or should the entire enterprise be abolished? If the latter, then what? If the former, what are the necessary reforms?
In The Idea of Prison Abolition (Princeton UP, 2022), Tommie Shelby undertakes a systematic and critical examination of the arguments in favor of prison abolition. Although he ultimately rejects abolitionism as a philosophical position, he builds from the abolitionist program’s crucial insights a positive view of what it would take to create a prison and incarceration system that is consistent with justice.
Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Episode details and artwork are published by the show’s own feed. Sentinel plays short cited excerpts and links every episode back to its publisher.