You’re a prison abolitionist. You’re in a high stakes discussion where you have to answer seriously and be convincing.
Someone asks you : “yeah, but what are we to do with people breaking the law, then? What will you replace prisons with ?”
What will you answer?
Edit : Thanks a lot for your answer, they were very interesting and reflecting different ways to frame a world without prisons.
Except from one or two edgelord hot takes, of course.
What will you replace prisons with?
Work and reeducation camps.
Prisons are punishment but that won’t deter crime committed out of necessity or substance abuse from self medicating mental illness. Root cause that shit - meet the basic needs (food, water, shelter) of everyone unconditionally, provide physical and mental health care to everyone as a basic right, and you suddenly have less need for prisons.
Interesting cases that challenge this argument: white collar crime - would this be consider a mental illness? Sexual predators - definitely mental illness likely caused by prior trauma, we need to provide mental health care.
The basis of prison abolition is not the idea that we should replace prision with something else. We start by understanding that it is the structure of our society that creates and perpetuates systems of crime and punishment. The emphasis on punishment does little or nothing to address the safety, health and property rights of the public. So it can be seen that it is a public problem that requires a public solution: the vast resources spent on catching and punishing people would be better spent on prevention by making mental health, substance abuse and addiction treatment affordable and available to everyone.
Rather than punish, a greater effort could be made to help rehabilitate people who have lost control of themselves and their lives, to restore them to living in harmony within their communities. Of course there will always be a small proportion of the population that are unable to healthy lives, unable to resist resorting to theft, violence, and desperate attempts at self-medication. Such persons do not benefit from punishment.
I don’t think you can start with prison reform.
You can’t rehabilitate someone who is stealing out of necessity or because they are mentally unwell. Have to start with providing UBI and universal Healthcare (including and especially mental health and addiction rehab). Probably also should solve homelessness and provide cheap educational options too.
Once that’s in start improving prisons, make them not slums, provide some ways to keep up with the times (an excon with no concept of the internet is not going to be functional in today’s society) and provide job programs and some way of protecting excons from excessive discrimination. The number one metric to measure the success of a prison should be the recitivism rate.
Now maybe after all this is done there’s a few people who cannot be classified as insane and are deadset on committing violent crimes. I will point out that a lot of organized crime would fall apart when there isn’t a fresh supply of disenfranchised people to exploit at the bottom and a lot of white collar crime does not need full exclusion from society more than exclusion from the system they were exploiting.thise few remaining murders and terrorists can go be in prison.
Tldr: to fix prisons you must first fix society.
I don’t think it’s possible to abolish prisons for all crimes. But why does a thief or a drug dealer (or worse, just a drug user) need to be in prison? What about the nature of their crimes necessitates imprisonment as a reasonable method of corrections?
If the point is stopping people from reoffending, prisons don’t do that. Like objectively. Recidivism in the US is super high, and going to prison predicts increases in the severity of crimes people commit.
So, what reduces recidivism? Eliminating the factors that drove them to crime in the first place. So, you monitor them closely - house arrest, assigned social/case workers, etc. Like a more robust parole system for nonviolent offenders. With enough surveillance, you can reduce the likelihood of reoffence by making the chances of getting caught much higher. This enhanced monitoring would be temporary.
For violent offenders and more serious criminals, maybe prisons are still necessary. But they don’t have to be dehumanizing and can provide necessary health/psychiatric, educational, social, and job skills training.
You could make the corrections system more effective by making society easier for criminals to reintegrate into. If you’re a felon and you can’t find work because you’re a felon - how are you going to afford to live within the confines of the law? Step 1) jobs programs for felons with a path to eliminating non-violent offenses from your record as it relates to work with exceptions as necessary. Step 2) improve the education system to prevent people from turning to crime and to help give former criminals relevant job skills to earn an honest living. Step 3) provide healthcare to people - having access to healthcare for mental and addiction-related conditions is super important to reduce crime.
Basically - prison abolition isn’t about just letting rapists and murderers go free with no consequences. Instead, people in favor of prison abolition are typically in favor of reducing the societal pressures to commit crimes and preventing reoffense.
In short, prison abolition isn’t about abolishing prisons?
Bad name choice in my opinion, as it immediately makes me think: what a dumb idea. There will surely always be people beyond a point of no return.
In short, prison abolition isn’t about abolishing prisons?
Bad name choice in my opinion, as it immediately makes me think: what a dumb idea.
This is kind of like saying being anti-war is a dumb idea because there will surely always be wars fought in defense. Being anti-war isn’t necessarily being an absolute pacifist. It’s about opposing war and striving towards a future where war is a relic of the past. Everybody understands this, but struggles to apply the same logic to other topics.
Striving for intentionally utopian and impossible ideals is a great idea, actually, as long as you recognize it for what it is. I’m a prison abolitionist. Ultimately what I strive for is a society that doesn’t need prisons. I don’t know if total prison abolition is possible, but worst case scenario, we get as close as possible. What’s so bad about that?
Similarly, I’m a communist, in the classical anarchist sense: abolition of state, class, and money. Are these things possible? Maybe not. In fact, probably not, at least not in any timeframe where humanity will be recognizable to us, as it would require true peace between all people and absolute post-scarcity in every way available to everyone. But worse case scenario, we get as close as possible.
Ultimately, adopting a utopian ideal is a recognition that the struggle to do better never ends. We’re never “done”. There’s no end of history. Even if we do somehow achieve it, it must be maintained.
Everybody understands this, but struggles to apply the same logic to other topics.
People don’t go: England is polio free, yet there’s people with polio.
Perhaps this method of communication is something that will have to adapt. It disengages a lot of people who otherwise would share the same goals.
The name is important because of the parallels between slavery and modern day prisons.
At minimum, the movement is about completely rethinking our approach to dealing with crime. If we “only” reduce the prison population to 5% or 1% of its current count in the process, we won’t have abolished all prisons, but we will have succeeded in abolishing many parts of the current criminal justice system.
Yeah. I gather you’re from the US.
I’m not telling you what to do.
If we “only” reduce the prison population to 5% or 1% of its current count in the process
Then why call it abolish prisons?
I see now that you’re trying trying to trigger an additional emotional response. Working on association, rather than logic. Such manipulation, especially, is something I would not want to be a part of. It’s vile.
You do you. I’ll just repeat my original statement: it also drives away people, who would otherwise agree.
