Incarcerated residents in a recreation yard at Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, California. (Noah Berger via Getty Images) August 3, 2024 was my final day on ‘B’ Facility at California State Prison, Sacramento (CSP-Sac). I only spent thirteen months there, ultimately leaving in a flurry of intrigue and public scrutiny, but in that time CSP-Sac proved itself to be a front-line battlefield in the current war to reform the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). More than merely a notoriously disruptive and violent institution, Sac is unique because of a strange project that began there a few months before I arrived, a project that brings into daily conflict two contradictory correctional philosophies. Collisions like these always have much to teach, truths written in the tragic fallout from lives lived and lost, teetering off the edge, headstrong in their convictions. Abolitionist’s Notebook is a series of articles dedicated to clarifying the nature of those pitted conflicts, attempting, through careful account and critical consideration, to unveil the mechanisms of harm upon which prison is based.