Let me say a few words about prison abolition … I know that the question many of you have is: what are you going to replace it with, right? You abolish the prison, what are you going to replace it with? I want to ask you to think about the same question in relation to slavery. If you abolish slavery, what are you going to replace it with? …I’m asking you to try to think about the abolition of the institution of the prison in a different way. And not to force your imagination to try to come up with a solution that fits the footprint of the prison. It makes no sense to think about another institution that is simply going to replace the prison. No sense.
As a matter of fact, the term prison industrial complex allows us to think about the project of abolition in much broader terms. The prison industrial complex is not the sum of all the prisons and jails in this country, and throughout the world. It is a sect of symbiotic relationships among correctional communities, transnational corporations, media conglomerates, guards unions, legislative and court agendas. Of the increasing transnational incarnation of the prison industrial complex, the most dramatic is the insinuation of US style anti-crime rhetoric into the new democracy of South Africa, and the erection of the U.S. Style super-maximum security prison, as well as the spread of private prisons in South Africa, private prisons owned and operated by corporations that are headquartered in the United States of America. And of course, the…largest private prison company, the largest transnational private prison country is Corrections Corporations of America, which got started in Nashville, Tennessee. And until recently, CCA owned and operated the largest women’s prison in the country of Australia.
Now, if we …accept the fact that the contemporary meaning of punishment is fashioned through these various relationships, then our abolitionist strategies will propose alternatives that try to pull these relationships apart. Does that make sense? What would it mean then, to imagine a system in which punishment is not allowed to become the source of corporate profit? How can we imagine a society in which race and class are not primary determinants of punishment, or one in which punishment itself is no longer the central concern in the making of justice?
Rather than try to imagine a single alternative to the existing system of incarceration, we might envision an array of alternatives. Education can be seen as the most compelling alternative to imprisonment….And so what we would have to do is de-militarize our schools….Revitalize education in all levels. Unless the current structures of violence are eliminated from schools, and impoverished communities of color, including the presence of armed guards - armed security guards and police. And unless schools become places that encourage the joy of learning, these schools will remain the major conduits to youth prisons, and then to adult prisons. Alternatives that fail to address racism, male dominance, homophobia, a class bias, and other structures of domination will not lead to decarceration, and will not advance the goal of abolition.
I want to conclude with a story. The story of Amy Biehl, and I am doing this in lieu of evoking the growing body of literature on reshaping systems of justice around strategies of reparation rather than retribution. In 1993 when South Africa was on the cusp of its transition, Amy Biehl was devoting a significant amount of her time as a foreign student to the work of rebuilding South Africa. Nelson Mandela had been freed in 1990, but he had not yet been elected President. On August 25th, 1993 Biehl was driving several black friends to their home in Guguletu. Biehl was a white student from New Port, California. Fullbright student. A crowd shouting anti-white slogans confronted her, and some of them stoned and stabbed her death. Four of the men- of course they were all black- participating in the attack were convicted of her murder, and were sentenced to 18 years in prison. In 1997, Amy’s mother and father, Peter and Linda Biehl, were persuaded finally to support the amnesty petition the men presented to …the Truth and Reconciliation …commission. They apologized to the Biehls and they were released from prison in 1998. But two of them…wanted to meet the parents of the young woman they killed. They said they wanted to say more about their own sorrow for killing the Biehls’ daughter than it had been possible [to say during] the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. ‘I know you lost a person you loved. I want you to forgive me, and take me as your child,’ [said Nofemela]. The Biehls had established the 'Amy Biehl Foundation’ in the aftermath of their daughter's death. So they asked the two men … to work at the [Foundation’s] Guguletu branch. Nofemela became an instructor in an after school sports program, and Peni became administrator. In June 2002, a little more than a year ago, the two men accompanied Linda Biehl to New York, where they all spoke before the American Family Therapy Academy on reconciliation and restorative justice. In a Boston Globe interview, Linda Biehl, when asked how she now feels about the men who killed her daughter, said: 'I have a lot of love for them.’ After Peter Biehl died in 2002 last year, she bought two plots of land for the two [men] in memory of her husband so that Nofemela and Peni can build their own homes.
A few days after the September 11 attacks, the Biehls had been asked to speak at the synagogue in New Port beach. According to Peter Biehl, and I am ending with this quote, 'we try to explain that sometimes it pays to shut up and listen to what other people have to say. To ask: "why do these terrible things happen" instead of simply reacting.'
Thank You.
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