Prison abolition movement in the United States
Scholar Dorothy Roberts takes the prison abolition movement in the United States to endorse three basic theses:[5] Thus, Roberts situates the theory of prison abolition within an intellectual tradition including scholars such as Cedric Robinson, who developed the concept of racial capitalism,[6][7] and characterizes the movement as a response to a long history of oppressive treatment of black people in the United States.
Du Bois—particularly in his Black Reconstruction in America—saw abolitionism not only as a movement to end the legal institution of property in human beings, but also as a means of bringing about a "different future" wherein former slaves could enjoy full participation in society.
[21] By that year, groups existed in Kiev, Odessa, Bialystok, and trials of its members, led to its spread across Europe and North America.
[23] The Makhnovist revolutionary insurgent army adopted a declaration in 1919, stating we are against all rigid judicial and police machinery, against any legislative code prescribed once and for all time, for these involve gross violations of genuine justice and of the real protections of the population.
[26] A campaign to stop the construction of a migrant prison involved anarchists unloading thousands of crickets into the offices of an architectural firm in 2018.
[29] The 2022-2023 hunger strike of anarchist prisoner Alfredo Cospito led to police skirmishes with protesters in Rome, a Turin cell tower being lit on fire, and a letter with bullets was sent to a newspaper stating "if Alfredo Cospito dies judges will all be targets, two months without food, burn down the prisons.
[32] Neighbourhood based "peace committees," composed of elected community members with, largely, no formal legal education, were created to resolve conflicts using a model of consensus and restorative justice.
[34] Liz Samuels has observed that, following the Attica Prison uprising, activists began to coalesce around a vision of abolition, whereas previously they had endorsed a program of reform.
However, the great majority of people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of imprisonment, even though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons do not work.
"[37] In 1997, Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore co-founded Critical Resistance, which is an organization working to "build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.
[46] Project NIA, an organization founded in 2009 by Mariame Kaba, helps to end the incarceration of youth, as well as victims of violence "through community-based alternatives to the criminal legal process.
Anarchists also oppose prisons given that statistics show incarceration rates affect mainly poor people and ethnic minorities, and do not generally rehabilitate criminals, in many cases making them worse.
[51] In October 2015, members at a plenary session of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) released and adopted a resolution in favor of prison abolition.
Prison abolitionists such as Amanda Pustilnik take issue with the fact that prisons are used as a "default asylum" for many individuals with mental illness:[56] Why do governmental units choose to spend billions of dollars a year to concentrate people with serious illnesses in a system designed to punish intentional lawbreaking, when doing so matches neither the putative purposes of that system nor most effectively addresses the issues posed by that population?
"[61] Another point raised is that the current focus in criminal justice reform on nonviolent, nonserious and nonsexual offences shrinks the borders and understandings of innocence and guilt.
[65] Investigations into the Canadian federal penitentiary have found that there is a general failure of the Correctional Service of Canada to meet safe and humane custody and assisting in the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders into the community.
[69][70] Proposals and tactics often include:[70] The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime published a series of handbooks on criminal justice.
[71] According to Sweden's former Prison and Probation Service Director-General, Nils Öberg, this emphasis is popular among the Swedish because the act of imprisonment is considered punishment enough.
[72] This focus on rehabilitation includes an emphasis on promoting normalcy for inmates, a charge led by experienced criminologists and psychologists.
[73] In Norway a focus on preparation for societal re-entry has yielded "one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%, [while] the US has one of the highest: 76.6% of [American] prisoners are re-arrested within five years".
[75] Many prison reform organizations and abolitionists in the United States advocate community accountability practices, such as community-controlled courts, councils, or assemblies as an alternative to the criminal justice system.
[76] Abolitionists like Angela Davis recommend four measures as a way to deal with violent and other serious crimes: (1) make mental health care available to all (2) everyone should have access to affordable treatment for substance use disorders (3) make a stronger effort to rehabilitate those who commit criminal offences and (4) employ reparative or restorative justice measures as an accountability tool to reconcile offenders with their victims and undo or compensate the harm done.
Some anarchists and socialists contend that a large part of the problem is the way the judicial system deals with prisoners, people, and capital.
Some anarchists contend that with the destruction of capitalism, and the development of social structures that would allow for the self-management of communities, property crimes would largely vanish.
There would be fewer prisoners, they assert, if society treated people more fairly, regardless of gender, color, ethnic background, sexual orientation, education, etc.
