The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom

The voices of those experiencing life in the long term are often not heard. This collection of essays and personal stories from the people most impacted by long-term incarceration in Statesville Prison bring light to the crisis of mass incarceration and the human cost of excessive sentencing. Compelling, moving narratives from those most affected by the prison industrial complex make a compelling case that death by incarceration is cruel and unusual punishment.

Implemented in the 1990’s and 2000’s harsh sentencing policies, commonly labeled “tough on crime,” became a bipartisan political agenda. These policies had real impacts on families and communities, particularly as they caused the removal of many non-white and poor individuals from cities like Chicago.

The Long Term brings into the light what has previously been hidden, a counter-narrative to the tough on crime agenda and an urgent plea for a more humane criminal justice system. The book is a critical contribution to the current debate around challenging the mass incarceration and ending mandatory sentencing, especially for non-violent offenders.

"This book is sunshine. A work of co-creation committed to destroying all forms of confinement, this powerful collection of critical essays, personal reflections, conversations, poetry, theater, art, war stories, love stories, and manifestos expose long-term caging for what it is: a drawn out execution. It also advances an abolitionist vision dedicated to interrogating and dismantling the institutions, practices, and ideologies that harm us, and imagining (and enacting) new ways of living, learning, and loving--new feminist freedoms. Inspiring, sobering, illuminating, terrifying, The Long Term, in other words, refers not just to the sentence but also to the struggle. As you read each page, remember that sunshine is life and power."

−Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

"The Long Term is a powerful collection of voices, curated and edited by a powerful line-up of veteran organizers and radical thinkers. The writers in this collection make a compelling and eloquent case against 'the prison nation' and give us a glimpse of the resistance and the alternatives that are already in the works."

−Barbara Ransby, historian, writer, activist and Distinguished Professor of African American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago

"The Long Term is a book for your favorite armchair: powerful reflections from the formerly incarcerated, the currently incarcerated, and those who work for their release from behind bars. From the front lines, it will inflame and inspire you to be part of this powerful wave of prison abolition and liberation."

−Bernardine Dohrn, co-author Race Course Against White Supremacy

"The essays collected in The Long Term address essential questions facing contemporary movements: "What must be transformed and built to eliminate harm, cultivate strong communities, and create forms of authentic public safety? What are the levers and the mind-sets that make prisons and policing appear logical, necessary, and possible?" This collection pulls together brilliant insights from writers inside and outside prisons, making critical insights and proposals about what it will take to get rid of police and prisons and build real safety and justice. This book is a must-read for anyone fighting against racism and criminalization. The Long Term is full of insightful, practical wisdom about how the punishment system is operating, what is fueling it, what reform attempts are inadvertently propping it up, and what kinds of work is actually necessary to abolish it. The Long Term is a bold and important contribution to feminist, anti-racist, and anti-punishment scholarship and activism."

−Dean Spade, founder of TORCH, Training and Organizing Resources for Community Health, author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law