This week on Kite Line we air a discussion from 2021, in which we speak with prison abolitionist journalists Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law.

We share the first part of our discussion on their recent book, Prison by Any Other Name: Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms. The book is an in-depth look at the various “alternatives to prison” that are held up as substitutes for incarceration, but which, in many cases, bring surveillance into our homes and communities. The alternatives mentioned in our discussion today – electronic monitoring, probation, court mandated psychiatric confinement or Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOTS), and the sex offender registry – are just a few of the methods critiques in their book.

Law has been on the show before, and you can hear her talk about women’s resistance within prisons here, and on a panel about carceral feminism here.