I am 100% pro prison reform, what we have now is awful, but prison abolition makes no sense to me. Without the power to physically restrain people temporarily, the state has no power to enforce anything and if the state can't enforce any consequences on citizens, then the state will dissolve. You can't say that you'll rehabilitate criminals but only if they consent.
To use a real-life example:
Someone I know eighth-hand once seriously considered murdering someone who threatened very descriptively to assault his daughter, but instead chose to call the cops. If there was no alternative and no enforceable consequences, would he have stopped? If he didn't believe that the state would at least temporarily take away this guy's liberty would he have felt as though he had to act? I honestly don't know but it seems more likely.
(For the curious, this was all on Facebook, so the offender in question used his real name and was out on parole for domestic abuse, and I say that not to make a point that he is a bad person or whatever, just to clarify the situation.)
The point I'm trying to make is our incredibly terrible justice system is still a pressure valve. It tells people "here is something you can do instead of murder" and "if you do violence there are consequences, so maybe think it through".
Most of the prison abolition literature seems to center on A. the prison system is awful (100% endorsed) and B. we should have better social services (yep) and this will decrease crime (proven time and time again). I am very pro making our prison system more rehabilitative and also making it illegal for jobs to ask if someone is a former felon and abolishing prison labor because it provides a direct incentive to imprison more people.
But putting aside how prison abolition is a fantasy when there isn't the current political will to make our existing prisons have humane living conditions, I still can't understand how actual full-on prison abolition would work and you're clearly much more immersed in the justice system than I am, so I'm curious about your thoughts on the subject.
Want to make sure you've seen this post; I got both of these asks around the same time and since they're not quite the same I wanted to make sure I address both, but don't repeat too much material. That post talks a lot about the composition of people in prison, which is most likely not what you expect, and how even crimes defined as "serious" and "violent" are often some goddamn bullshit that the police inflated. Cleaning out a lot of that muck is at the core of prison abolition, I think.
But I'd love to dig into this too. You're talking about the justice system's overall purpose in society, and that's genuinely fascinating! Also about the causes of interpersonal violence and mitigation of those causes on a societal level! These are things I would love to study more; my exposure to theories on violence are a little limited.
Societies have justice systems. For what purpose?
A Marxist might say: to enforce the capital-holders' repressive power over labor. Ideas like: The law, in all its wisdom, forbids sleeping under a bridge equally to the rich man and the poor man. Evidence like: 90% of the people charged with crimes are under the federal poverty line +25%.
A conservative or authoritarian moralist, like a Christian Republican, might say: to enforce morals on a society that would be chaos without them. This flirts a little with what you're saying above. Ideas like: Society is a thin veneer and mankind is savage and violent by nature. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Do the crime, do the time. Vengeance, sayeth the lord.
A less authoritarian moralist, perhaps a liberal?: to rehabilitate the criminal. Prisons should have educational programs; probation should help people desist from lives of crime.
A socialist might say: to preserve the social contract. The justice system is meant to be a way to heal wounds done to society and prevent further harm. This is where you get the restorative justice movement. The idea of payment of restitution. Community service.
Let's unpack the pressure valve theory that you're talking about.
This is that: if people are wronged, they would do something about it, unless there is a trusted system to do something about it for them. Evidence for it? You betcha: how many escalating feuds between gangs/families/factions/parties/etc. does history even have?
(Quick side note: There is some interesting criminological theory that Black people in inner cities are both under and over-enforced. For low-level crimes, they are over-enforced, suffering under more policing than their white counterparts; in terms of murder, they are under-enforced, as the murders of black people are often disregarded and forgotten, unsolved. The theory states that this is why gangs keep killing each other in revenge.)
You're also talking about the coercive power of the state. Threat of prison isn't the only coercive power that the state has, but it sure is an overused one around here. You don't want to come to court? We'll put you in jail! Don't pay your child support? Jail! You're mentally ill on the street? Jail!
But this doesn't explain everything about why people obey the government, right? I don't know that people file tax returns because they think they're going to jail if they don't. Doctors don't keep their medical files in systems up to HIPAA standards because they might go to jail if they don't. And you know what most of my clients do if they find out they have a warrant? They peacefully go to jail to turn themselves in.
The government's last response to resistance is violence, just like violence is a last resort in any interpersonal reaction. That's not the same as saying that all government power is based in violence.
(In fact, I have a theory that if mild-looking people who aren't bristling with guns, tasers, radios, body armor, etc., showed up to some of the scenes that call for police, they could take charge of a scene with much less violence taking place. I think personally they should try day-glo vests and clipboards and lanyards.)
I also think it's worthwhile to question whether the person who ended up calling the police really wanted to engage in violence -- theorists on violence basically say that most people don't want to, and therefore in the moment, if they can, if they're given escape hatches to take without losing face, they take those escape hatches. You have to train people really really hard, break them down and brainwash them into obeying orders, to get them ready to go shoot strangers in war. It takes the overwhelming pressure cooker of violent streets and constant trauma to make Black kids pick up guns, too. It's not overnight, it's not immediate. Violence is obvious, and there's bonkers level opportunities to de-escalate it. We are programmed to think it is more necessary than it is because we see heroes solving problems with violence all the time on tv and movies. But violence almost always, if not always, causes more problems than it solves.
But here's the other thing.
Did it work, calling the police, in that situation? Did a very descriptive threat of harm to that guy's daughter result in any additional protection for her? Or was it just charges for him, a constant ordeal in which her pain is paraded publicly for her, and then a short prison stay and he's out again to threaten her? Because that's my best case scenario. My worst case scenario on that would be: police say he hasn't yet done anything so there's nothing they can do. Because police don't protect.
What if we built a justice system around protecting people, not about authoritarian prison-based revenge once the harm is already done? I'd like that better.
Finally: the fact that prisons would not be in such ubiquitous use does not mean that they would necessarily be gone. As I said in the other post, maybe 1 in 100 of our current prisons would still be needed for people who cannot or will not stop harming others. I don't know. I certainly don't believe I have all the answers. I am very glad that you guys are asking good questions, though, and this was a good question.
