Angela Davis traces the roots of contemporary prison abolition theory at least to Thomas Mathiesen's 1974 book "The Politics of Abolition", which had been published in the wake of the Attica Prison uprising and unrest in European prisons around the same time. She also cites activist Fay Honey Knopp's 1976 work "Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists" as significant in the movement.