Abolition of police and prisons

360 readers
1 users here now

Abolish is to flourish! Against the prison industrial complex and for transformative justice.

See Critical Resistance's definitions below:

The Prison Industrial Complex

The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.

Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for "tough on crime" politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.

Abolition

PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.

From where we are now, sometimes we can't really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn't just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It's also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.

Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
151
152
 
 

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (December 9, 1842 – February 8, 1921) was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism.

153
154
4
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Five to c/abolition
155
156
157
158
159
160
152
submitted 1 year ago by mambabasa to c/abolition
 
 

police-jobs-suck.com:

Would you wear a uniform that evokes fear & distrust in your neighbors?

Would you risk your mental well-being, affecting you & your loved ones?

Would you be comfortable with helping send someone to prison for years because of a petty parole violation or non-violent offence?

Would you participate in actions that split apart families?

Are there other ways you can build safety, beyond policing, in your community?

161
 
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/8465104

The allegations against L.B., made by an anonymous caller at 4:45 a.m. that day, were false. These included that she was a stripper (she worked at a home for people with disabilities); that she used drugs (none were found, and a drug test was negative for all substances); and that an abusive man lived with her and that she owned “machine guns” (after an exhaustive search and interrogation, both claims were deemed baseless).

In fact, L.B. has never been found to have committed any type of child maltreatment, ACS and court records show.

Yet the anonymous caller, whom L.B. believes to be a former acquaintance with a grudge, has continued to dial in to New York’s state child welfare hotline. Each time, this person or possibly people make outlandish, often already-disproven claims about her, seeming to know that doing so will automatically trigger a government intrusion into her domestic life.

And ACS obliges: Over the past three years, the agency either has inspected her home or examined and questioned her son at school more than two dozen times. Caseworkers have sought a warrant for only three of these searches, most recently in August. All of those requests have been rejected by judges, according to court records.

162
163
164
165
-2
The silence of Gaza (self.abolition)
submitted 1 year ago by mambabasa to c/abolition
 
 

In recent days, scientists from the School of Plant Sciences at Tel Aviv University have announced that they have recorded with special ultrasound-sensitive microphones the screams of pain that plants emit when they are cut or when they lack water. In Gaza there are no microphones.

Giorgio Agamben, October 30, 2023

166
167
168
 
 

In Part 1, Dr. Rodríguez explains his belief that abolition is our obligation, touching on the development of anti-Black algorithms used to keep people in prison, what it means to be vulnerable in the context of doing this work and how vulnerability is the starting point for an abolitionist practice, and the profound impact that Robert Allen’s book Black Awakening in Capitalist America had on shaping Dylan’s own thinking.

169
170
 
 

Excerpt:

The notion of “double punishment”, also known as “banishment”, refers to the process undergone by foreign nationals sentenced to a prison term who, at the end of their sentence, are then transferred directly to a closed centre in order to be repatriated to their country of origin. These are not just a few isolated cases, since the double sentence affects a very large proportion of people held in closed centres. The over-representation of foreign nationals and undocumented migrants in prisons is mainly due to the treatment they receive from a racist police force that acts on the basis of race, and to the precarious living conditions in which the authorities keep them, forcing them to expose themselves to repression.

171
 
 

For petty bourgeoise aspirationals and the ultra-wealthy, the NPIC provides the perfect platform for the co-optation of our mass movements. Protests become photo opportunities; elements of resistance and revolution are appropriated to market an individual's brand or NGO to philanthropists, funders, and sponsors. Brand recognition is key. Locally, we’ve witnessed executive directors and NGO boards claim police abolition, only to turn around and hire ex-police officers to perform union busting on their behalf. We’ve seen blatant misogynists and homophobes win the title of “Activist of the Year” throughout a near-endless stream of self-congratulatory awards ceremonies. Milwaukee suffers an ongoing plague of micro-celebrity activists, bolstered by an NPIC culture that actively blocks opportunities for effective, revolutionary organizing. Our point is simplistic, the conclusion feels trite, but it’s a message Milwaukeeans need to hear. If any real work is to get done, the NPIC and career/celebrity activism need to be abandoned or eventually destroyed.

172
4
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Five to c/abolition
173
174
175
10
submitted 1 year ago by mambabasa to c/abolition
 
 

Prison industrial complex abolition is “a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment." — Critical Resistance

Abolition requires us examine and do away with the ways in which all systems and institutions replicate methods of surveillance and punishment as a means of social control. Resources in this section cover fundamental concepts of abolition and histories of what it looks like in practice.

view more: ‹ prev next ›