I'm sure that after reading the true purpose of prisons (which is not about deterring crime) and about their dehumanizing and cruel conditions, you might be wondering how we can fix this. While some suggest prison reform, I suggest removing the root of the issue by abolishing prisons and embracing the transformative justice approach. By doing this not only can we ensure justice for people but we can also ensure just for the environment because we are all one. We are part of the environment and that is something we all need to remember.
When someone's heart no longer works and doctors have tried everything in their power to fix it, do they decide to keep that same heart? No. The doctors remove the root of the issue by removing the heart and replacing it with a healthier heart. However, this takes time and does not happen overnight. Sometimes the new heart does not work either but the bottom line is that the doctors are adamant in trying new things for a better outcome.
This is how I see prison abolition, although it is definitely more complex. I see it as a way for society to start from scratch but with better intentions, values, and purposes. In this case, we are removing the root of the problem, prisons, and replacing it with justice and liberation. We are ridding ourselves of the pain and oppression that prevent us from attaining justice. Incarceration is the disease and to heal society, we must remove it from its deepest roots.
To start off, I ask readers to please watch this video to get a better sense of what a world without prisons would look like. Most importantly, I want readers to know that people have been envisioning this and are fighting for it. Another world is possible, we just need more people to join us.
What is Prison Abolition?
First, prison abolition is much more than liberating prisoners. That is the ultimate goal but it is not something that would happen overnight. Prison abolition is a long-term goal in progress that also looks at fixing the factors that contribute to prisons, such as poverty, racism, educational and income inequality, mental illness, and homelessness. Prison abolition is ensuring basic human rights and justice for everyone that comes out of prison. As it is now, ex-felons are still incarcerated in the sense that they are not allowed to vote, have restricted employment opportunities, and are excluded from welfare benefits (1). Many people claim that prisons are modern slavery because the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery except in the case of prisoners (2). Nowadays, when we learn about slavery many of us cannot believe that society let that happen. However the truth is that we are still letting slavery happen, except this time it has a different name: prisons. So why not finish what the Thirteenth Amendment attempted to end?
Right now, our society is built upon the idea that we must suppress people's liberty and human rights for the safety of others. However, that sentence in itself is inhumane because while there are now more Black people incarcerated than there were slaves, do you think the Black communities feel safe? When law enforcement talks about "safety" we must realize that the safety they want to protect is that of white communities and the elite. Why is it that we even feel the need to take someone's liberty? What makes someone superior enough to decide that Black and communities of color should permanently be stripped of their liberty?
In whatever light you put it, prison is not the answer. It is not right to fight crime with more crime and with cruel punishment. We definitely are not seeing benefits from this. The only thing that is apparent is that prisons contribute to an endless cycle of institutionalized racism, poverty, and inequality. For our society to progress we must not only abolish prisons but abolish capitalism all institutions that uphold oppression and suffering. It is difficult to envision prison abolition but what is clear is that we all envision justice.
But this is why I asked some individuals to share their vision of a world without prisons and I now share this with you all below. I did not include their names to respect their privacy but I hope that you are all able to see that this is something possible.
As Angela Davis puts it, "Prisons are an obsolete institution because they exacerbate societal harms instead of fixing them" (3).
The Three Pillars of Abolition
The three known pillars of abolition are moratorium, decarceration, and excarceration.
Moratorium is the first step to abolition because it demands a stop to more prisons. The idea is that if we stop building more prisons, fewer people will become incarcerated. As I mentioned in my other post, since the 1970s the US saw a 700% increase in the number of people incarcerated. That number follows the fact that between 1990 and 2005, five hundred and forty-four new prisons were built. Meaning that in 15 years, one new prison was opened every 10 days (3).
The second step is decarceration, which is getting people out of prisons. This looks at how those that pose no threat to society should not be locked behind bars. For instance, in the past 10 years, 350,000 arrests have been made for marijuana possession, yet medical and recreational marijuana are legal in California (3). As I discussed in this post, more people are currently incarcerated for drug offenses than for violent offenses. There should be no reason why anyone arrested for marijuana possession should still be in prison when Marijuana dispensaries are widespread in California now.
Excarceration is the most transformative approach among the three as it consists of diverting people from prisons. It attempts to end the revolving door that prisoners find themselves in from life to death. As I talked about in this post, Black and communities of color are criminalized from the moment they are born- from living in surveilled communities that disproportionately face environmental injustice to working in places that are dangerous and underpaid. Therefore, excarceration fights the factors that would criminalize someone back into prison. It fights homelessness, decriminalizes drug uses, and decriminalizes mental health episodes. Excarceration advocates for housing, rehabilitation services, educational spending, social welfare, and for funding mental-health treatment (3).
Transformative Justice
Transformative justice is the second part of my solution. The video below shows how transformative justice looks like- something that is possible because it already is happening in some places.
"They're not bad, they just weren't taught anything," is something that stuck with me from that video because I believe that that really summarizes what restorative justice is.
Simply put, transformative justice (TJ) is a community-based approach that rests upon justice, healing, accountability, and safety to respond to violence (4). It recognizes that our current criminal justice system is flawed, ineffective, and punitive. Instead, TJ is about creating justice together by ensuring that those affected by injustice are given the chance to address and fix the harm (5).
TJ looks at the larger picture and recognizes that much of the crime we see is a result of generational cycles of violence (4). For instance, 2.7 million children in the US are currently growing up with one or both parents in prison. Two-thirds of those parents are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses (6). The approach uses those facts to demonstrate that the factors that lead to crime are much deeper than what society thinks.
What I take from restorative justice is that it is a way in which people who have committed crimes are given a chance to restore themselves and their communities because crime affects everyone, not just the person that is incarcerated.
Hernández, K. L. (2011). Amnesty or Abolition?.Boom: A Journal of California,1(4), 54-68.
Hill, M. L. (2013). A world without prisons: Teaching confinement literature and the promise of prison abolition.English Journal, 19-23.
Washington, J. (2018, July 31). What Is Prison Abolition? Retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/what-is-prison-abolition/
Mingus, M. (2019, January 11). Transformative Justice: A Brief Description. Retrieved from https://transformharm.org/transformative-justice-a-brief-description/
What does Transformative Justice look like? Survivor-focused, Trauma-Informed, & Community Accountability to ending Sexual Violence. (2017, April 18). Retrieved from https://www.calcasa.org/2017/04/what-does-transformative-justice-look-like-survivor-focused-trauma-informed-community-accountability-to-ending-sexual-violence/
The Drug War, Mass Incarceration and Race (English/Spanish). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.drugpolicy.org/resource/drug-war-mass-incarceration-and-race-englishspanish
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