Thinking about prisons: A response to O’Flaherty, Sethi, and Murphy

Tommie Shelby

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2025, vol. 24, issue 3, 242-248

Abstract: I provide a response to the commentaries on my book The Idea of Prison Abolition (2022) by Brendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi and by Colleen Murphy. With respect to the first commentary, I briefly discuss the comparison of US prisons to Norwegian prisons; the deterrent effect of well-crafted sentences; and the prospects of a world without prisons. In response to the second commentary, I argue that the methods of the scholar-activist and those of the analytic political philosopher are not incompatible with meaningful engagement and disagreement on the abolition-versus-reform question despite these methodological differences.

Keywords: Prison abolition; mass incarceration; criminal justice reform; crime deterrence; scholar-activism; black studies; analytic philosophy; transitional justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pophec:v:24:y:2025:i:3:p:242-248

DOI: 10.1177/1470594X241295675

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