Joshua Dubler and Vincent W Lloyd, Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons
| Author | Jason S Sexton |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211055167 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Joshua Dubler and Vincent W Lloyd, Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and
the Abolition of Prisons, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020: 256 pp.
(including index), ISBN: 978-0-1909-4915-0, $35.00 (hbk)
Written by two religion scholars, Break Every Yoke is a wide-ranging profile of religion’s
significance to prison abolitionism. Focused on American mass incarceration, and critical
of the secular state’s options as well as ongoing calls for prison reform, the book argues
that religion is not only helpful in the abolitionist effort, but essential—carrying with it
more radical visions capable of leveling the current prison system. Beyond a utilitarian
vision, Dubler and Lloyd understand that mass incarceration emerged in the same cultural
moment as the big box store and megachurch. Thus they seek to present not only how
religion can assist abolitionism, but also how religiously-inclined prison reformers
ought to embrace abolitionism as the only way to meaningfully address the prison
problem. Committed unequivocally to prison abolitionism (emphatically: not reform),
the authors illustrate visions of how the modern world might be remade if deeper,
more radical religious roots are drawn from and appropriated. These roots hail not
from the litany of secular approaches to mass incarceration, they argue, nor from carefully
curated and often repressed domesticated forms of religion, but from the fervor of
genuine religious faith; or, they curiously suggest: at least ‘something closely related
to religious faith’(p. 10).
The book’s passionate argument and plea is that ‘without getting religion—and ignit-
ing whole religious communities with abolitionist fire—prison abolition will never
acquire its necessary force’(p. 11). The first chapter opens with this argument, accepting
nothing less than full-blown prison abolitionism as the only possible way to rethink the
prison, with the assumed necessity of incarceration being so deeply ingrained into today’s
understandings of justice. Lest the argument for abolitionism—shutting down every jail
and prison—seem superficial or mere posture, the book’s core (chs. 2–4) provides histor-
ical exposition fleshing-out what the authors call ‘the spirit of abolition.’The exposition
carries insights into rationale from normative theological views and material expressions
of religion, with the authors claiming to be working not as historians proper, but as scho-
lars of culture, of religion, and as genealogists. This shapes the book’s argument, charting
how the Civil Rights Era’s political pressures once required religious fervor supported by
theological arguments. But these vanished after the Civil Rights Era, giving rise to the
‘political theology’that built mass incarceration. This political theology in America
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(2) 555–574
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745211055167
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