Over the course of the past few weeks, you might have heard about
concepts that, on the face, sound jarring. Abolishing the police?
Abolishing prisons? Who will keep us safe? Where will the bad guys go to
prevent them from harming more people?
I have been a prison abolitionist for two years now and part of what
changed my mind about accepting abolitionist ideals was finally
researching enough to imagine the future without prisons, to have a
picture in my mind of what the world could be instead of what it is.
Now, as a caveat, my image of prison abolition is neither universal nor finite. A world without prisons means local communities decide what they need and those needs will vary by community;
it could look like a hundred or even a thousand different things at the
same time. Maybe only one community will find my vision of prison
abolition to be the best one, or dozens might while everyone else might
not. And that’s amazing! Part of accepting abolition is accepting that
our lives and economy are incredibly carceral and until we learn to
predict the future, we must recognize that decarceration will probably
come with unexpected outcomes. However, an abolitionist knows that
communities are capable of handling unforeseen challenges and trusts
that whatever comes of decarceration will surely be preferable to the
devastating effects of our current carceral system.
Why Abolition?
Once we realize our systems of power are flawed, it can be comforting
to believe in easy, simple solutions. We might think to ourselves, if
only we could get rid of private prisons, or if only we could change the
way communities are policed, then things will not need to change much
to solve the problem. This is, I’m sorry to say, false hope. There are
no quick fixes or easy solutions. Here’s why reform can’t solve the
issues with our carceral system:
The function of the police is problematic in and of itself. As you might have heard in the past, the American policing system evolved from slave patrols
and, in many ways, still serves to confine Black Americans to
involuntary servitude today. Even if you believe — in the face of clear structural racism embedded in the institution itself — that the police can be reformed, you must at least concede the job of a police officer includes choosing who to protect from whom.
Next time you watch a video documenting police conduct, observe who the
police choose to defend and who they choose to identify as the
aggressor. There’s a reason many leftists refer to cops as the armed
wing of capital: police officers consistently side with right-wing agitators and capitalist property over the people they are said to protect. This is not because individual police officers are making choices; it is their job to defend the status quo (and all of the devastating things that go with it).
The prison system is built to drift towards privatization, expansion, and worsening conditions.
Our modern prison system is described by abolitionist Angela Davis as
“what made the most sense at a particular time in history.” It began in Pennsylvania in the revolutionary era
with the advent of the penitentiary and became standardized in the US
during the 19th century. Prior to this, rather than an arbitrary length
of time in prison being assigned to a crime, punishments were rooted in
labor. Since then, the popular mythos has codified the prison into an
inevitability, which must always exist, along with its respective police
force. Many reform advocates suggest that, by doing away with the
roughly 9% of privately run prisons (where conditions are worst), we can
maintain the inevitable prison without its worst elements. Like other
industrial complexes, however, the business of incarceration cannot be
satisfied with just the status quo. Profit is so ingrained in the
existence of the prison that even abolishing privatized prisons could
not stop the industry’s need for fresh blood. Shaun Bauer writes in American Prison
that the first instance of prison privatization occurred in the 1850’s,
in tandem with the end of slavery and the beginning of racialized
prisons as the main form of criminal punishment. Housing, feeding, and
clothing individuals who do not contribute to the economy (except to
serve in state-sanctioned sweatshops) is an expensive endeavor and state
governments simply cannot maintain it. So long as prisons exist, it
will always be cheaper for state governments to delegate incarceration
to private corporations, ensuring conditions will always grow worse.
Moreover, even if we banned the privatization of prisons, this would
not be enough to satiate the needs of those companies that provide food,
technology, security, contracting, and other innumerable goods and
services that profit from the growth of inmate populations. As long
as there is a prison, it will be beholden to private capital interests
that will always undo and work around whatever reforms you might
achieve.
The police draw from a pool of applicants who are drawn to the police
force. These individuals are the kind of people who are attracted to a
job that largely consists of incarcerating people (who are disproportionately Black and Brown) and carrying a gun down the streets of poor neighborhoods. From there, they experience a real-life version of the Stanford Prison Experiment on a daily basis. As such, crime is shown to actually decrease without the police, as evidenced by statistical analysis of an NYPD strike in 2014. This is not a system which can be saved nor is it one worth saving.
Structural problems can only be solved with a change in the
structure. If you understand the racism, sexism, homophobia,
transphobia, or classism embedded in the American criminal “justice”
system, you will see why it needs to be overhauled — not reformed.
Attempts to reform it have left us where we are today. We can, however,
completely replace the system altogether with a new one that has none of
these embedded chauvinisms. One need only look to Minneapolis, which implemented seven of the currently popular “8 Can’t Wait” reform proposals on top of a number of other progressive policing reforms but still
saw the brutal murder of George Floyd that engendered the current
protests. We are living through the evidence that reformism will not
save us from the system working as it was intended to.
A full overhaul may sound daunting, but fear not! Abolition is
possible by addressing the root causes of crime. Let’s break it down:
what might cause a person to commit a crime?
They have done something that plainly should not be illegal. These crimes include protesting charges, drug possession, loitering or sleeping outside, sex work, and migration.
They suffer from some kind of psychiatric condition. This includes addiction to drugs or alcohol and so-called sociopathy.
They are in poverty, and this has led them to pursue crime as a means of survival.
They want power over others. This includes crimes such as rape, murder, hate crimes, and assault.
This step, at first, might sound counterintuitive. We’re talking about abolition, not healthcare! However, American prisons are the largest providers of mental health services in the country, and a disproportionate number of individuals currently arrested by the police suffer from some kind of mental illness.
So, upon phasing out American prisons, we would need to replace them
with hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Individuals suffering from
addiction who would otherwise have been convicted of a criminal drug
offense would have access to rehabilitation programs, instead of
receiving prison time, which could help them overcome their dependence.
People who suffer from undiagnosed or untreated mental illnesses that
cause them to commit crimes would better be served in hospitals than
jails anyway.
Some might call this form of hospitalization a “prison by another
name,” so I will clarify that institutionalization would not exist to
confine individuals suffering from mental illnesses. Much like with any
other sick person, hospitalization would not be punishment, and
it would not be mandated for an arbitrary amount of time by the court
system. An individual would be hospitalized (if inpatient care is
necessary at all) for an amount of time decided by a doctor, just as
they would be with a broken leg or for a surgery. It is not a
punishment, only a program with the goal of finding long term treatment
that allows a person to reintegrate into their community. This includes
individuals with antisocial personality disorder (colloquially referred
to as sociopathy), many of whom can live wholly normal lives without experiencing empathy
if given the proper care. It also includes a range of other conditions
that might bring people to engage in “criminal” behavior as a result of
manic episodes, hallucinations, or states of distress. Treatment should
be individualized, accessible, and decarceral for all mental illnesses
and addictions. By making it so, we can eliminate a lot of crime before it happens and stop recidivism for anyone who slips through the cracks.
What would a diversion program do? In many cities, diversion programs
are currently being used by the police as alternatives to charging
suspected criminals with a crime. Instead of going to court, an unhoused
person might be paired with a local nonprofit that provides housing. A
person who has just overdosed is taken to a hospital and offered
treatment. These programs are already in place in over 100 major American cities
— the only distinction between the status quo and the abolitionist
solution is that a licensed social worker or a community member be the
one to call the social program for a neighbor in distress, rather than
an armed defender of capital (social workers are, in some cities, already doing this and showing success). What’s more, these programs have been shown to reduce recidivism and save cities money, even with just the small scales they have been implemented under.
Now, what about the big scary crimes? What about the crimes with
victims? What if someone steals my car or hurts me? For these offenses,
it is important to remember that the police are likely not going to fix
the issue if it negatively affects the status quo. Very few sexual assailants end up being charged, let alone convicted. 40% of murders go unsolved.
The carceral system does not bring justice for many victims of crime,
largely because it is reactionary. It only punishes; it does not
prevent.
In her book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, Angela Davis posits that
the true alternative to prisons is schools. This does not mean that
schooling alone can prevent all crime but it does mean that decarceration begins with anti-racist education and with removing police officers from classrooms.
It starts with teaching children from a young age that justice is not
about making sure the bad guys get what’s coming to them, but rather
about “reparation and reconciliation.” Then, we make our justice system
reflect that.
Restorative justice is a response to violence and harm that centers these things and that, once again, is already being practiced effectively within our current world for workplace conflict resolution and in the juvenile “justice” system.
Under a restorative justice framework, an individual who commits a
crime with a victim — someone who steals from or harms another person —
is given a program of activities designed to instruct that person about systems of power and their place in them.
These activities might include meetings with a counselor, attending a
class or lecture, reading and submitting a reflection, volunteering, or a
mediated discussion with the victim of the crime and their support
network. It would likely include more than one of these tasks. The goal
of the process would be to ensure that the person who caused harm would
not learn to fear incarceration (which doesn’t reduce crime)
but instead would learn to understand what power structures and
personal drives caused them to commit this crime and to put them on a
path to understand themselves, their actions, and the world around them,
ensuring that they would not want to commit a crime again. At the same
time, the victim of the crime or victim’s family would have the
opportunity to access resources and care if necessary, to sit down and
speak to the person who wronged them, and to find more closure than the
current system gives.
For my example, however, I’d like to get a bit more personal. When I
was a freshman in college, like far too many young women, I was raped. I
will spare the details but, in essence, it is clear looking back that
this was no miscommunication. My rapist only spoke with me on Snapchat,
an app that would delete my assertion that I would not have sex with him
(the only evidence I had). Never mind the fact that sleeping women
can’t give their consent.
I had no evidence that I did not want to sleep with him. I had no
evidence that I was sleeping while he had sex with me. I knew if I went
to the police, this assault would become my entire life when I just
wanted it to go away. At the time, I merely wanted my assailant to
understand what he was doing was wrong and not do it again, but because
he was in the US on a student visa, the best case scenario our “justice”
system gave me was seeing him deported. I didn’t want that. I had heard
so many conversations about “women ruining men’s lives” with assault
accusations, and they affected me. I was not yet a prison abolitionist; I
didn’t even know what restorative justice was. But I did know the
system would likely fail me, or it would fail him. Even though I wanted
to hate him, I couldn’t. I still thought it might have been some kind of
misunderstanding. All I wanted was to make sure it didn’t happen again.
Though I didn’t understand it at the time, I, like many victims of
sexual assault, needed a prison abolitionist program. I wanted
counseling for myself. I wanted him to learn about the patriarchy and
rape culture. I wanted to sit down with him and have a conversation
where I could look him in the eyes and get an apology, and then I wanted
to go back to my life. Instead, caught between a rock and a hard place,
I did nothing. And because of that, he most definitely went on to rape
other women.
I’m not the only survivor who feels that the system fails us. One need only look at the slew of victims’ families opposing the death penalty for their loved ones’ murderer
to see there is something disproportionate and unjust about the way our
carceral system treats survivors of crime and tragedy. In the current
structure, we have no say in the “justice” that is supposedly for us and
can only cross our fingers for closure. Depending on how powerful or
privileged the aggressor is, we likely will not even see a response to our pain at all.
Our current system is an all-or-nothing punishment machine, letting the
wealthy off with warnings and locking away the poor for life.
If one is Black or Brown, one need not even commit a crime to have
one’s life taken. As I write, protests wage throughout the country
following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.
These innocent people were lynched by police officers and retired cops
who then went on to walk free until national public outrage forced
officials to charge them. There is still no guarantee that anyone will
be convicted for these crimes. We live under a system which kills some
for nothing and does nothing while others kill.
We cannot allow this moment of national unity and resistance to be
stymied by middling proposals which suggest compromises as a starting
point. We can build structures to replace police and prisons. In fact,
police and prisons were themselves built as progressive alternatives to
the systems before them. It is only natural that we replace an outmoded
structure of racism and reaction with something more effective and
humane. Will it be easy? No, but neither was abolishing slavery or
abolishing segregation and those structures were just as (if not more)
ingrained into the societies of their time. Those abolitionists did it
because they were unafraid to demand what was needed. We can be too.
For anyone still struggling to grasp the idea of an abolitionist
future, I will include now a list of other potential abolitionist
worlds. As I mentioned earlier, the best part about prison abolition is
that it does not have a finite proposal. If my vision isn’t your vision,
perhaps someone else’s might be.
Raegan Davis is a
community organizer based in Washington DC. She has written for
Mondoweiss as well as the Industrial Worker and can be reached on all
platforms at @theraegandavis
Groups of farmers protesting at the borders of Delhi broke through police barricades and entered the Capital ahead of the agreed time, leading to clashes with cops at many places. While the Delhi Police had allowed the farmer unions to take out the tractor rally, the farmers pushed into Delhi much before the time of the rally and also changed routes, reaching ITO in the heart of Delhi. Groups of protesters clashed with the cops and also vandalised buses at ITO.
“Office of the former president. What a joke. This is what happens when you’re a narcissistic attention-starved publicity whore. Pathetic. Watch. Within seven days he’ll have his hand out begging, again.” #ConvictAndDisqualifyTrump #ConvictAndDisqualify
“Office of the Former President” I mean… technically it’s not untrue? Is it pathetic? Oh god, yes. But just the name is possibly the most honest thing he’s ever been part of.
“Office of the Former President” is what you create when you are legally barred from starting a charitable foundation because you embezzled money from kids with cancer.
On this day, 26 January 1944, Angela Yvonne Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama. A communist, civil rights organiser and the third woman to feature on the FBI’s most wanted list, for a time Davis was also closely associated with the Black Panther Party.
Davis worked at University of California at Los Angeles until being fired for her political views on the orders of president Ronald Reagan. Soon after, Davis was arrested following the Marin county courthouse incident on bogus charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy of which she was later all acquitted at trial.
Davis has also been a consistent advocate of feminism which takes into account factors like race, class, capitalism and transgender rights, and highlights the vital historical contributions of Black women: “When we speak of feminism in this country, there almost always is the tendency to assume that this is something that was created by white women… Women like Ida B. Wells, women like Mary Church Terrell, women like Anna Julia Cooper, are responsible for the feminist approach today that we generally call intersectionality… What I want to argue is for a feminist perspective that understands that we cannot simply reform institutions like prison and the police, because they are so embedded with racism and violence that, if we’re ever going to extricate ourselves from that, we have to abolish prisons”.
In this collection of Davis’s writings, including contributions from others like James Baldwin and Huey P Newton, Davis tells the story of her trial and incarceration, as well as the prison system in the United States in general: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/if-they-come-in-the-morning-angela-davishttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1638778542973956/?type=3
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