What Does Abolition Look Like to You?
Envisioning a world beyond the carceral state.
Now that we are starting to do some of the thinking and working towards prison abolition, it’s important to think about how we would address the things we deem “criminal” in our current state. How do we deconstruct the social conditions that lead to crime, and how do we envision dealing with those that harm others when prisons are gone? Here are four responses to this question from our writers.
Gaige M H : Those who hold power have the privilege of defining which acts are considered criminal in our society and have the ability to determine who will suffer the consequences of crimes. Our current idea of crime has its roots in capitalism and was created to defend and produce profits while maintaining power for those who hold it.
Our current justice system ignores the acts of human atrocity committed by those in power which includes, but is not limited to, leaving the bodies of dead workers in collapsed buildings, terrorizing families, losing children who have been imprisoned by ICE, or murdering citizens on the street. Rather than focusing on these destructive and immoral acts of criminality and disregard for human life, our current society arrests folks for traffic tickets, non-violent drug related offenses, and petty crimes. Instead of creating the infrastructure to support those who experience mental illness, homelessness, food insecurity, or poverty in general, our society would rather criminalize their existence.
Rather than creating systems that allow for restorative justice through community, creating meaningful change, and actually holding offenders accountable, our society has decided to use the idea and fear of criminality as an excuse for the theft of labor.
To expel capitalistic ideas from our response to crime, we need only to look towards the holistic solutions that were in place on this land prior to colonization. Indigenous solutions, based on communal responses to crime, which reflect on making amends, restoring relations, and holistic healing are the only moral way forward. We can no longer ignore, monetize, and stigmatize those who commit harmful acts. We need to invest in everyone holistically and understand that the incentive to commit crime is tightly knit to the philosophy of capitalism and the maintenance of power. Once we can realize that the standardized bureaucratic laws, decided by few and designed to be unintelligible to the regular person, are not put into place to protect us, but to harm us, we can move forward and begin the necessary work to start our process of healing.
Joseph Coco: Prisons are the problem, but we have to take care not to replicate those same systems within ourselves and our communities.
When I think of abolition, I think of a world where society has reworked its relationship with violence on every level. Violence is an ubiquitous part of our lives, infecting everything from a micro to macro level. There’s no better example of violence I can think of than the way Americans maintain prisons.
Throwing members of a population into a prison is violence. Removing people from their families, friends, and support networks is violence. This country’s history is mired in it and one of the most prolific forms from our violent past is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Millions of people were ripped from their ancestral homes, taken overseas and thrown into service for the American state. Millions of Native Americans were killed off, disappeared from the face of the planet to make way for Manifest Destiny and the new world. America took its first steps towards adulthood by making sure generations upon generations could not do the same. All of it is violence, still looming over our collective shoulders.
It is no wonder that this darkness has taken on the forms of the Prison Industrial Complex and its younger sibling Police Brutality. When you have a society which has been taught that the theft of people is a way of doing business, incarceration is the logical response. For many Americans, we’ve been forced into mental prisons by our own country, jaws held firm as endless amounts of propaganda and dehumanizing beliefs have been force-fed to us.
Abolishing prisons means slapping the spoon out of America’s mouth, rejecting the bile it feeds us. It means examining the ways we interact with others during conflicts and in general. If we don’t look at the ways we replicate the violence of the carceral state can we truly call ourselves abolitionists? If we sit and watch as those around us fall victim to the same programming we have, who is our abolition for? Freedom is not something to be monopolized and placed in the hands of a select few, it belongs to everyone.
Some of us are further along with purging the violence from our body and minds, others are just now beginning. All of us are still capable of harm no matter what part of our journey we’re on. We have to understand this when we spread the doctrine of freedom and abolition across different communities. If we refuse to meet people where they’re at, then we refuse to see their basic humanity. We lock them behind metal bars, real or imagined, while we fail to lift our fingers and open our mouths to act.
Cassidy Henderson : We know that a more just future without prisons is within our reach — our challenge now is to imagine and articulate what forms of accountability and rehabilitation will take the place of the prison-industrial complex.
We know that a more just future without prisons is within our reach — our challenge now is to imagine and articulate what forms of accountability and rehabilitation will take the place of the prison-industrial complex.
As far as deconstructing the social conditions that lead to crime, there are myriad measures that could be taken in terms of public education, the social safety net, and legislation, which would dramatically reduce criminal behavior. Most “crime” is the result of criminalizing poverty, addiction, and other circumstances, all of which could be minimized in more humane, sustainable, and cost-effective ways. Changing this is not difficult — all that is needed is to continue building and exercising the political willpower of the people. The harder question is how to transition away from the carceral state in the meantime, and how we will help and hold accountable those who may be beyond rehabilitation or reincorporation into society in this low-crime, prison-free future.
I still see some form of institutionalization in a prison-free future, but, unlike prisons, these would be decent facilities where the structure of life would be geared towards building people’s capacity to function as members of a group. There would be group therapy sessions, treatment for addictions, and people would maintain the space, cook the meals, etc. Good behavior would be incentivized, while bad behavior would necessitate additional accountability, etc. These facilities would not be a means of demeaning, devaluing, or exploiting those who have been deemed harmful to society. Few incarcerated people are actually unable to stop harming others, but individuals who are so deeply disturbed that they cannot function cooperatively, even in a well-run facility, would be assessed and given more suitable accomodation and treatment. Everyone working in these facilities would be well-trained and well-paid.
How we deal with those who are unable to function in society should be a measure of pride in our ideas and commitment to human dignity. This ethos is absolutely within our reach — but in order to imagine, demand, and construct it, we must first confront and dismantle the carceral logic that each of us has internalized from living in a society defined by colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism, each of which perpetuates and benefits from the carceral state.
Frances W.:The prison system is borne of the same patriarchal ideals that support rape culture and prevent true healing and accountability.
As a survival of sexual assault and thus someone who is naturally concerned about the welfare of survivors, I have been devoting some thought to the question of how sex crimes would be dealt with in a world without prisons. I agree with what Cass mentioned in regards to there still being some level of institutional or rehabilitative facilities for people who are not ready to be integrated into society. Therapy and restorative justice would be emphasized, where offenders would be encouraged to take control of their own healing and challenge the mindsets that led them to harm others.
In terms of sex crimes, I believe that the root of many of them comes from how we are taught to understand power, as well as the way that we are all fundamentally disempowered in our hyper-capitalistict system. This coupled with our lack of education on healthy sexuality and consent create the perfect storm for rape culture.
The Puritanical roots of American culture teach us that sex is dirty and shameful. By the same this token creates a situation in which every type of innocuous behavior is sexualized. An example of this sexualization is girls getting sent to the principal’s office for displaying their shoulders in school. Girls are taught from a young age to feel shame about their bodies and their relationship with sexuality in general this prevents girls from being able to articulate their desires and needs in this area.
Boys are often taught that men want sex and women want love, leaving the queer community out entirely. This normalizess the idea that you must coerce women into sex. Since sex education is censored by religious communities through out most of America, children do not receive adequate information about consent and what healthy sexual relationships look like.
Our current prison system does not punish rape in a capacity which allows the rapist to acknowledge the harm that their actions cause the victim to experience. Instead, our current system subscribes to the patriarchal mentality that women are men’s property, and that by raping a woman the offender is devaluing another man’s property. This is part of why our justice system is still fundamentally stacked against survivors.
In order to end rape culture we need to work toward unpacking the cultural patterns which cause it and confront rape culture within our own families and households. Currently, ourt system allows us to project the problem of rape onto individuals instead of confronting the way that we fail to educate our children on consent and sexual agency and the deep-rooted sexism in our culture.
Men as a whole need to envision and adopt healthy masculinity and heal their relationship with the archetype of feminine. This is the type of work that offenders would spend time on in a rehabilitative center. Our current prison system does not allow for this and arguably reinforces the colonial and patriarchal attitudes that feed rape culture.
A new system would allow for survivors to be truly protected and given space to find healing and empowerment. It would also allow offenders space to heal themselves and no longer see harming others as a way to achieve power.
