Far from being unrealistic, abolition is an indispensable part of a realist politics. In the book Prison Abolition for Realists, Anna Terwiel examines the work of abolitionist thinkers and activists since the 1960s—Michel Foucault, Liat Ben-Moshe, Angela Y. Davis, and more—to argue that prison abolition is a realist political project. Terwiel is joined here in conversation with Kirstine Taylor. This conversation took place in late 2025.

Anna Terwiel is assistant professor of political science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and codirector of Trinity’s Prison Education Project. Terwiel is author of Prison Abolition for Realists. 

Kirstine Taylor is associate professor of political science and the Center for Law, Justice & Culture at Ohio University. Taylor is author of Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Foucault / Discipline and Punish

Prison Information Group

Prison+Neighborhood Arts/Education Project

Nils Christie

Louk Hulsman

Angela Davis

Liat Ben-Moshe / Decarcerating Disability

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Thomas Mathiesen

W. E. B. Du Bois

Mariame Kaba

Erin R. Pineda / Seeing Like an Activist

Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA)

Praise for the book:

“Both clearly written and timely in its subject matter, Prison Abolition for Realists offers a cogent way of thinking about abolition. Anna Terwiel intervenes in the debate over whether abolition is utopian in its aims and excellently frames her argument in the tradition of political realism.”

—Ali Aslam, coauthor of Earthborn Democracy: A Political Theory of Entangled Life

Prison Abolition for Realists by Anna Terwiel is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.