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.