Synopses & Reviews
Prisons Will Not Protect You takes a critical stance against the prison industrial complex and the systems of inequality and violence perpetuated by hate crime legislation. This archival anthology introduces the history of this legislative solution and interrogates the gay community's unquestioned loyalty to the prison industrial complex. It argues that hate crime legislation, which enhances penalties and can be used to bring in the death penalty, does not address actual causes of harm and violence and only funnels massive numbers of people into the profit-driven prison system.
These essays also examine certain specific cases of violence towards queer and trans people, including the New Jersey Four and the Texas Four, demonstrating the vulnerability of gendered, raced, and classed queer bodies within the labyrinthine and mundane realities of law enforcement. Prisons Will Not Protect You exposes deadly links between state-sponsored violence, homophobia, transphobia, and the criminal punishment system while articulating the need to build better solutions to end all forms of violence.
About the Author
Ryan Conrad is also the editor of two other Against Equality books: 9780615392684 and 9780615518831. An attorney, trans activist, and educator, Dean Spade is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law (9780896087965) and founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.