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.
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.
