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.