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While jails and prisons have been dominant institutions for the control of men, mental institutions have served a similar purpose for women. That is, deviant men have been constructed as criminal, while deviant women have been constructed as insane.

— Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)

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More quotes by Angela Davis

We take prisons for granted but are often afraid to face the realities they produce.

Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)

It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo.

Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business.

Masked Racism (1998)

Particularly in the United States, race has always played a central role in constructing presumptions of criminality.

Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)

Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world

All Angela Davis quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Angela Davis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.