Intervention: conventional wisdom says that reform is the most that can be done to mend the CJS, but this wisdom still assumes that incarcerating people is the answer. This is a problem because it still relies "on the threat of sequestering people in dreadful places designed to separate them from their communities and families" (10). This is a starting point for anyone who at least perceives that the CJS is broken and wants to improve it.

Intervention: conventional wisdom claims that more prisons were needed because of more crime, but evidence indicates that crime rates were falling; therefore, there was not a need for more prisons. This is important because the last 30 years have seen a boom in prison construction and prison populations inspired by erroneous assumptions, to the detriment of millions of [imprisoned] people's lives. Furthermore, if this boom was inspired by erroneous assumptions and US taxes helped fund the boom, it was a massive waste of taxpayers' money. This should matter to anyone who wants to see their tax dollars help create a more equitable, humane community.

Argument: prisons are indeed obsolete for a number of reasons:

1. The CJS is racist, classist, and ableist to its core; therefore POC, poor people, and PWD will be most impacted by reliance on incarceration.
2. When we allow capitalist ethos to inform private prison construction, we create a demand for more prisoners, and we reproduce the conditions that allow people to become criminals.
3. A punitive CJS ignores the social and economic problems that force people into illegal activity and instead criminalizes people for taking desperate measures to support their families or for not having developed effective conflict management strategies.

This word choice makes Davis's position on the very idea of prisons clear: the idea that nothing lies beyond the prison, that incarceration is the solution to crime, is foolish, absurd, and apathetic.

A sort of research sub-question: if the answer to the titular question of this book is "yes," how do we proceed?

Methodology: examine studies of prison populations for evidence of the racism of the CJC, and to help answer the question of whether prisons are obsolete.

Connects again to Spade: treating prisons as a solution to crime only perpetuates the problem.

Connects to last week's Spade reading: the people who cause the most damage and pose the most danger are already in positions of political and economic power, and risk factors for criminal behavior are economic insecurity, and lack of education, opportunity, and infrastructure.

This hints at an intervention: Davis is going to argue against the idea that prison should be an inevitable fact of life, especially for poor POC (and PWD, though Davis doesn't mention PWD here).

The paragraphs that follow here are evidence of the racism, classism, and, to some degree, sexism of the US criminal justice system.

Also evidence of the idea that a for-profit prison system creates demand for more and more prisons, and more and more inmates.

The book asks the research question in its title: are prisons obsolete?

I struggle with this so much. Intellectually I know it's true. But a year ago, I found out that a nightmare ex of mine, who is in his mid 30s by now, had groomed, raped and then continued to harass a 15 year old girl he worked with. He got 90 days in jail and three years' probation, which was horrifying to me. This wasn't the first time a woman had been a victim of violence at his hands; it was just the first time he'd actually been penalized for it. Plus, he'd come from a well-educated, upper middle-class background, so it was hard to view him as a victim of the system. I wanted to see him rot in prison and experience every horror story we hear about prison. And yet I know, intellectually, that prison is hardly the place for a man to unlearn his toxic attitudes about women and sex.

I think about this a lot: how difficult it is to "develop the capacity to imagine" a more compassionate and just system when the current system is all we've ever known, and when the values of the current system inform our choices in ways we're not even aware of.

Another intervention: here's what a more compassionate and more just system could look like.

Another intervention: rather than follow the same system that criminalizes already marginalized people, change the system so that marginalized people aren't devoured by it. Maybe even change the system so that people AREN'T marginalized.

First intervention: rather than lock up and forget those who have been deemed "bad people", provide connection and advocacy for those impacted by the criminal punishment system.

Method and also an introduction of interventions: Spade has acquainted readers with the problem of criminal punishment-minded hate crime legislation; now it's time to share alternative strategies for stopping homophobic and transphobic violence.

Method: Articulate for the reader the five basic concepts the reader must grasp and accept in order to get behind Spade's argument.

Argument is along the lines of "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house": queer and trans people know what it is to be marginalized and at a high risk for violence. While they have every right to desire safety and dignity, Spade argues that hate crime legislation relies too much on the same criminal punishment system that marginalizes queer and trans people. This is inconsistent from a philosophical standpoint, and risks ultimately feeding the problem in that "locking the bad people up" has shown to only contribute to a culture that targets marginalized people for harsher criminal punishment.

Going off of what Leah said here, this may be true for most persuasive, analytical, and informative writing. Perhaps not in the case of, say, fiction, in which case, if the author is explicitly trying to teach the reader a lesson, the reader is likely to sense it and resent the author for being pedantic.

Here again, these templates are appropriate in that they offer examples of how to establish the relevance and usefulness of one's claims. The reader, when they are in the role of writer, can then can use the basic structure of these templates when building their own arguments.

Method: this example shows the reader what it looks like when a writer clearly establishes the relevance and usefulness of their ideas.

Method: templates are useful, tools because they save the reader the work of re-inventing the wheel. Instead, they give the reader a basic model of a wheel and say, "now make it your own." In this case, the templates are appropriate because they show the reader what it looks like to indicate in their writing who should care.

Method: Graff uses an example of writing that offers "a clear claim" and that also frames the claim "as a response to what someone else said." This method is both valid and appropriate because it shows the reader exactly what Graff wants to see from more writing and speaking.

If our research question is "what methods or strategies can writers employ to communicate up-front why their arguments matter?", this statement points to a question of "what do these methods and strategies actually require the writer to do?"

I agree with Leah: this statement tells readers the likely reason for why students may feel like outsiders after a lecture, or why audience members may feel like we don't know what to do with what they've learned at a talk--which is that the speaker hasn't told their audience how their arguments and ideas fit into the audience's experience, or what their audience should do with the information they've learned. This sentence clues the reader in to the idea that this essay will teach them how to make it clear why their arguments matter.

This is meta in that it tells the reader why they, when they are in the role of writer, should care about making it clear who should care, and why, about their claims.