Semester of Graduation
Spring 2025
Degree
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
Document Type
Thesis
Abstract
This thesis examines the intellectual history of modern prison abolitionism by tracing its development and evaluating the work of prominent primogenitors of the movement. Though primary source documents drive the analysis in several chapters, this thesis is largely an interrogation of secondary sources. This is due mainly to this project’s emphasis on analyzing prison abolition discourse and its evolution, rather than historical events and causation per se. Therefore, recent contributions made by activists and scholars are as important to the conversation as are events from the near and distant past. This investigation reveals that 1976 was the pivotal moment for the movement, when disparate parts of proto abolitionism coalesced into a unified program.
Throughout this work, carceral institutions like jails and prisons are cast as tools of social control meant to prop up hegemony, with subjects like race, class, and gender highlighted to evidence these claims. However, these subjects cannot be divorced from each other and are often contingent upon one another. To separate gender from the conversation on race, for instance, would be to center whiteness in feminism. Therefore, this intersectionality has necessitated a more collective, community-oriented approach to dismantling the prison industrial complex from abolitionists, leading them to adopt both intersectionality and transformative justice as an analytical framework and model of justice respectively.
Though these points have, to an extent, already been made in recent scholarship surrounding the prison abolition movement, this project problematizes these narratives by utilizing a different methodological and analytical approach to the study of the topic. As such, it not only challenges the traditional timeline for the modern prison abolition movement but also provides a chronological (and historiographical) rendering of the ideas and themes that preceded it. This is in sharp contrast to the work of previous scholars who have instead treated this history thematically. By providing readers with a new and perhaps more accessible lens through which to view prison abolition and its inception, this project seeks to deepen understanding about the movement and to locate its current goals within a broader intellectual tradition.
Date
1-18-2025
Recommended Citation
Carroll, Neave M., "Abolishing The Cage: An Intellectual History of the Modern Prison Abolition Movement in the United States" (2025). LSU Master's Theses. 6088.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/6088
Committee Chair
Jacquet, Catherine O.