We need to abolish America’s prison system. Here’s how we can do it.

Our prison system is unjust, and if the goal is to make sure prisoners become better people, there’s a way to efficiently redesign it.

Inmates walk around a gymnasium where they are housed due to overcrowding at the California Institution for Men state prison in Chino, California, June 3, 2011. Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

By Ashish Prashar

Imagine a world without prisons. Go on, imagine it. Think beyond reform and towards fundamental change.

Prison abolitionists, like Angela Davis, ask people to enlarge their field of vision in order to advance big changes. So rather than focusing on the problems of the institution and asking what needs to be changed about that institution, people can raise radical questions about the organization of the larger society and the very existence of institutions.

For millions of Black and brown Americans, this radical imagination is urgent and necessary. Prison has been a blight on their lives for generations, reaching back to the 13th Amendment, which freed their enslaved ancestors in the 19th century but provided a loophole, making room for authorities to work around the abolition of slavery and giving birth to mass incarceration.

The work of abolitionists is to reveal the fundamental problems with the prison system and imagine a different society. This means the end of incarceration. This means funding community resources that prevent harm, and empowering systems that allow for…