got a couple ppl ask me this, so i wanna go more in depth. A natural question ppl ask almost reflexively when confronted with the idea of Prison Abolition is some variant of “what will replace prison then?” the answer to which like… depends on what you consider the role of prisons to be.
If you consider prisons as a way of “dealing with crime”, then you’ve gotta admit…. they do a pretty damn lousy job at that, since we in the states have got 1 in 4 prisoners in the world, but still a ton of crime. If you want to deal with crime, it seems natural to examine closer what drives people to commit them: obviously it depends on the specific situation, but most crimes can be attributed to either economics (stealing, selling drugs & the violence associated w/ it, “white-collar” crime - tho u don’t usually see them in prison for ~some reason~ - public homelessness, etc), violence (including what u mentioned), and obviously the two sometimes overlap. Since the former is a huge amount of the prison population, if we reorient our economy from one based on wage labor and endless accumulation, to one where people are provided everything they need for a comfortable life for free without having to prove their worth as a human being, immediately a huge proportion of what we consider to be crime is a thing of the past.
But what about the rest of it, right? What about that violent minority who still for whatever reason still want to hurt and abuse other people? What do we do with all of them then? and the truth is, there is no one answer, because there is no one situation that causes people to act violently. That totalizing logic of having one set way of dealing with people who don’t fit nicely with society is at the heart of the the carceral complex.
The remaining root causes are less straightforward to deal with, bc they’re usually either nebulous social systems of domination like white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, and so on (which although will lose much structural power when we overthrow capitalism, will still be significant issues on an inter-personal level), or the result of people reaching a breaking point of massive alienation from any actual human communities and reacting violently to those around them (or they abuse drugs to try to cope with that sense of isolation)
Education is a huge component of dealing with these violent social relations, and i don’t mean that in terms of just telling kids about consent from an early age, but also to have the cultural messages they receive while growing up actually demonstrate that communication and valuing one another’s autonomy actually creates a cohesive and harmonious society, instead of one that shows that greed, selfishnesss, exploitation and dominance can make you successful (say, even make you president). Kids absorb an astonishing number of social cues, norms, and boundaries without even realizing it, and that has a significant role in shaping how they will view and interact with other people.
“but!” i hear a thousand anons begin typing, “what about the people who already did commit a violent crime?” and even ignoring the shallow, easy rhetort of “well what do we do about them now?” alluding to the fact that the vast majority of people who commit violent assault (especially those of a sexual nature, or that done by cops) don’t generally see the inside of a jail cell, and if they do it’s generally not for that long (for a multitude of reasons, some to do w culture, some to do w legal manipulation, some to do w biases). That’s just a deflection. In reality, if someone has demonstrated that they will continue to act violently towards others, if they’re unwilling to reconcile with their victim(s), if community/close social circle interventions don’t change behavior, any sort of counselling or therapy doesn’t change it, if expelling them from a community would assuredly revictimize whatever community they then join… then i’m not in principle against enforced detention (with an orientation based on self-improvement instead of protestant repentance) but if a community comes to a situation that would necessitate that (which i think all things speaking, would be a pretty small minority of cases), then it’s not something that should be taken lightly, and should be subject to the most piercing, constant scrutiny and room for restructurement.
So much of this society, from our schools to our workplaces, from the streest to our highways, from the cityscape to our own home environments is structured in relation to the prison and Carceral logic, so questioning it understandably makes many uncomfortable. But a world not based on that logic is possible, and we can build it together :)
if u want to learn more, here’s some information and resources you may find helpful
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
discoholicmusic
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
tangentwithtanner
titsay
gummygunk
