The Long Term by Alice Kim

The Long Term

Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom

Alice Kim, Erica Meiners, Jill Petty

Haymarket Books · Print & ebook · October 19, 2018

Long Term Offenders, or LTOs, is the state’s term for those it condemns to effective death by imprisonment.

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Who it’s for
Essays challenge long-term sentencing and trace calls for reform and abolition.
Genres
Penology & Prisons, Activism & Social Justice, Criminal Sentencing
Published
Haymarket Books, October 19, 2018

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About this book

Long Term Offenders, or LTOs, is the state’s term for those it condemns to effective death by imprisonment. Often serving sentences of sixty to eighty years, LTOs bear the brunt of the bipartisan embrace of mass incarceration heralded by the “tough on crime” agenda of the 1990s and 2000s. Like the rest of the United States’ prison population—the world’s highest per capita—they are disproportionately poor and non-white.

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The Long Term brings these often silenced voices to light, offering a powerful indictment of the prison-industrial complex from activists, scholars, and those directly surviving and resisting these sentences. In showing the devastation caused by a draconian prison system, the essays also highlight the humanity and courage of the people most affected. This striking collection of essays gives voice to people both inside and outside prison struggling for liberation, dismantles claims that the “tough on crime” agenda and LTO sentencing keep us safe, and reveals the white supremacism and patriarchy upon which the prison system rests. In its place, the contributors propose a range of far-reaching reforms and raise the even more radical demand of abolition, drawing on the experience of campaigns in the United States and beyond.

Long-Term Sentences

Essays challenge long-term sentencing and trace calls for reform and abolition.

Come here for

  • Essays by activists, scholars, and people living with long-term sentences
  • Campaign experiences from the United States and beyond

Expect

  • Accounts of prison-system harms and resistance
  • Arguments against claims that long-term sentences keep people safe

Where it sits

Penology & Prisons52%
Criminal Sentencing38%
Activism & Social Justice26%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Criminal Sentencing
  • Civil Rights
  • Human Rights
Authors
Alice Kim, Erica Meiners, Jill Petty
Publisher
Haymarket Books
Published
October 19, 2018
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Criminal Sentencing