ABSTRACT
This chapter argues carceral reform is antithetical to the animal liberation movement and detrimental for prisoners, their communities and nonhuman animals. The first section scrutinizes the enactment of PACT in the U.S. to contextualize recent developments in animal protection advocacy and the carceral impetus driving reform in animal law. The second maps Dilts’ observation of how the abjected social pariah status has been modernized since antebellum slavery to illustrate carceral enjoyments and to whom these benefit. The third presents close readings of criminal sentencing for animal cruelty to demonstrate how the law is far from race-neutral —implying the animal protection movement’s willingness to strengthen carceral control over racialized bodies. After a brief detailing of the prison’s impact on human and nonhuman ecologies, the fourth section posits that companion animals are symbolic of one’s right to property and possession of whiteness. Because emotional responses to violence against nonhuman animals stoke the severity of punishment into increasingly carceral proportions, the fifth section suggests a redirection of emotions is paramount to dismantling the logic behind the animal protection movement’s preference for carceral intensification. We conclude that intercorporeal subjectivity can undo the genocidal logic behind incarceration—a creaturely politics calling for abolition writ large.
