Prison abolition movement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The aim of the prison abolition movement is to eliminate freedom-depriving institutions such as prisons, jails, immigration detention centers, war camps, by promoting more useful and humane alternatives.
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History
Quakers were one of the first organizations to propose alternatives to prison. Today, the Anarchist Black Cross is one of the major advocates of prison abolition.A significant part of a largely autonomous prison abolition movement is represented by Anarchist Black Cross Network and its affiliated groups. Much of the larger day to day campaigning is being carried forward by either individuals or collectives of five or less people.
One such group Raze The Walls! based in Seattle Washington existed nearly ten years before collapsing under the tremendous amount of work, infighting and political differences with other Anarchist formations.
While Raze existed, it sent literally thousands of books, zines, newspaper subscriptions to Prisoners and financial aid to families. Much of the material and ideas generated by Raze is still in use today.
Anarchists in prison abolition
Historically, anarchists have played a significant part in the prison abolition movement and this trend continues today. Their main reason is their wish to eliminate all forms of state control, of which imprisonment is one of its more obvious examples. Prisons also have a strong link with capitalism, especially in the case of private prisons and prison labor. Anarchism is against prisons largely because they house non-violent offenders, incarcerate mainly poor or colored people, and do not generally rehabilitate criminals, in many cases making them worse.
In place of prisons, anarchism proposes community-controlled courts, councils, or assemblies to control the problem of social crime. They argue that with the destruction of capitalism, and the self-management of production by workers and communities, property crimes would largely vanish.
Tactics
Tactics differ significantly depending on the political beliefs behind them, and include:
- Penal system reforms
- Substituting incarceration with supervised release, probation, or community work.
- Decreasing terms of imprisonment by abolishing mandatory minimum sentences
- Prison condition reforms
- Crime prevention rather than punishment
- Stopping of specific government programs that increase prison population (e.g. War on Drugs)
- Education programs
- Decreasing ethnic disparity in prison populations
- Fighting individual cases of wrongful conviction
- Educating people who have never been in prison about the problems
Arguments for prison abolition
- In the United States of America, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution did not abolish slavery, but limited it to cases where it is a "punishment for the crime". In some countries prisons are nothing more than institutionalized slavery.
- The state can always use prisons to put undesirables out of the way
- Judicial outcome depends on the financial resources of the accused
- Legislature is biased towards profiting one segment of the population over another. In most countries tobacco is legal, while marijuana is not, because large corporations control the former, while the latter will be impossible to control and tax.
- Police and prisons alienate people from their communities.
- There are examples of prisonless societies.
- Prisons are not proven to make people less violent.
- Prisons fuel greed and lust, rather than encouraging offenders to work to end those desires.
Arguments against prison abolition
- Prisons are necessary to preserve order and peace in society.
- Prisons provide appropriate punishment for crimes against society.
See also
List of organizations supporting prison abolition
- American Friends Service Committee
- Anarchist Black Cross
- Anarchist Prisoners' Legal Aid Network
- Critical Resistance
- Justice Now
- North American Prisoner Support Network
- Prison Activist Resource Center
List of other relevant organizations
- American Civil Liberties Union
- Amnesty International
- Books to Prisoners
- Families Against Mandatory Minimums
- Minnesota Prison Labor Union
- NAACP
- November Coalition
Relevant topics
- Birmingham Six
- crime
- false imprisonment
- incarceration
- judicial system
- law
- legislative system
- mandatory minimum sentence
- penal reform
- political prisoner
- prison
- prison education
- prison labor
- prisoner of war
- private prison
- probation
- slavery
- unfree labour
External links
- Prison abolition & alternatives (http://www.prisonjustice.ca/politics/abolition_alternatives.html)
- Prison Abolition pamphlet (http://www.campusactivism.org/uploads/CR_Abolition.pdf)
- Radical Alternatives to Prison (http://www.alternatives2prison.ik.com/)
- Howard League for Penal Reform (http://www.howardleague.org.uk/)
