"For me that’s looked sitting in a church with community members, hashing out a situation that occurred with a group of young men in the community, who had been responsible for mugging, terrorizing really in some ways, an older white man in the neighborhood—a man who was now incredibly fearful as a result of what had happened to him. Figuring out: why would you do that? What led to this? What might we imagine other than turning to the cops in this instance? How do we resolve both the fear that you’ve now introduced in this person’s life and the pain and dispossession that you’ve been experiencing in your own? I guess that answer won’t satisfy people who want you to provide them with a solution, with the solution. Who immediately want to know: “how are we going to deal with the rapists and the murderers?” This is the question that always gets thrown at anybody who identifies as abolitionist—and my question back is “what are you doing right now about the rapists and the murderers?” That’s the first thing: Is what’s happening right now working for you? Are you feeling safer? Has the current approach ended rape and murder? The vast majority of rapists never see the inside of a courtroom, let alone get convicted and end up in prison. In fact, they end up becoming President. So the system you feel so attached to and that you seem invested in preserving is not delivering what you say you want, which is presumably safety and an end to violence. Worse than that it is causing inordinate additional harm. The logics of policing and prisons are not actually addressing the systemic causes and roots of violence." . . — Mariame Kaba “Towards the horizon of abolition: A conversation with Mariame Kaba” twitter: prisonculture
