Relying on state violence to curb domestic violence only ends up harming the most marginalized women.

This carceral variant of feminism continues to be the predominant form. While its adherents would likely reject the descriptor, carceral feminism describes an approach that sees increased policing, prosecution, and imprisonment as the primary solution to violence against women.

Carceral feminists have said little about law-enforcement violence and the overwhelming number of survivors behind bars. Similarly, many groups organizing against mass incarceration often fail to address violence against women, often focusing exclusively on men in prison. But others, especially women of color activists, scholars, and organizers, have been speaking out.

By relying solely on a criminalized response, carceral feminism fails to address these social and economic inequities, let alone advocate for policies that ensure women are not economically dependent on abusive partners. Carceral feminism fails to address the myriad forms of violence faced by women, including police violence and mass incarceration. It fails to address factors that exacerbate abuse, such as male entitlement, economic inequality, the lack of safe and affordable housing, and the absence of other resources.

Carceral feminism abets the growth of the state’s worst functions, while obscuring the shrinking of its best. At the same time, it conveniently ignores the anti-violence efforts and organizing by those who have always known that criminalized responses pose further threats rather than promises of safety.

The short war which Azerbaijan waged against Armenian-populated Karabakh after a months-long blocade is over (Armenian separatists lost, and will likely get ethnically cleansed out of the region)...

...but in the aftermath, it's worth pointing out that several high-profile Azeris did speak against their government starting a war - and were repressed.

The most worrisome case is the chairman of the confederation of trade unions, Afiaddin Mammadov. A provocateur who had previously injured himself threw a knife at him, and cops arrested him immediately after that, claiming he had injured the provocateur.

Excerpt:

The two fatalities are among a growing list of young people dying inside Minnesota’s correctional facilities this year – another young man, Oscar D. Rodriguez-Corona, 21, was found dead inside Hennepin County Jail on September 18.

Rivera-Coba’s death is being investigated by the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office. However, nearly two months after he died, the county hasn’t received the toxicology or autopsy reports from the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office.

Rivera-Coba’s family and advocates gathered outside Anoka County Jail on August 10 demanding answers to his death and an investigation into the jail.

Did my first bit of Lemmy moderation ever to ban someone for making dehumanizing comments and making copoganda. Copogandists, we don't want you here. This is not your space. Please report such comments as you see it.

How do we imagine a world without prisons and policing? Transforming our punishment mindsets is a daily discipline. Punishment is so deeply ingrained that we fail to even notice how we enact it in our lives. It takes practice to uproot it and to focus on being more restorative in our interactions.

I think I agree with Robin D.G. Kelly that we can work toward and organize for abolition under capitalism, but that abolition itself also requires that capitalism be abolished alongside the police and prisons. Capitalism needs police and prisons to absorb surplus populations and as a means to keep proletarian unrest under foot. Capitalism cannot survive if prisons and police are abolished. Likewise, police and prisons need the wealth expropriated from the working class in order to maintain the police and prisons, as these things do not produce value in of itself.

Update from yesterday - Prisoners Face Retaliation for Protest at MCF-Stillwater

Abolition communism is not a qualitatively new form of communism but rather an integration of abolitionist and communist consciousness. Abolition communism is the idea that communist measures must simultaneously be abolitionist steps. This does not mean that abolitionist steps such as the defunding of police and decarceration of prisoners are necessarily communist measures, though these steps do make communist organizing under capitalism easier. Rather, communist measures implemented by abolitionist communists dismantle systems of policing and incarceration simultaneous to dismantling wage-labor, the State, work, et cetera, precisely because policing and incarceration are central to the rule of capital. The freeing of the prisoners and setting fire to the prisons does more for the proletariat than a hundred programs.

Robin D.G. Kelley talks on what abolition communism means as a horizon and as a practice.

Being personally thrilled with someone going to prison is anyone’s prerogative, and we understand that a person may feel joy at another’s incapacitation if that individual has repeatedly and unrepentantly caused grievous harm. Let’s be clear though: advocating for someone’s imprisonment is not abolitionist. Mistaking emotional satisfaction for justice is also not abolitionist.

Abolitionism is not a politics mediated by emotional responses. Or, as we initially wanted to title this piece, abolition is not about your fucking feelings. Of course, everything involves feelings, but celebrating anyone’s incarceration is counter to PIC abolition.

This may frustrate or anger people who want to claim an abolitionist identity or politic despite not being ready to operate from basic abolitionist principles. We understand. For years, both of us have facilitated community accountability processes to address interpersonal harms (particularly involving sexual and intimate partner violence). As survivors of sexual harm, accountability is always at the forefront in our consciousness. We understand how damaging and serious sexual violence is. And we too have sometimes wished that abolition wasn’t so rigorous in its demands of our politics.

While abolition is a flexible praxis contingent upon social conditions and communal needs, it is built on a set of core principles. Everyone doesn’t have to be an abolitionist. But if you declare yourself to be, you’re committing to some basic obligations....

As PIC abolitionists and transformative justice practitioners, we’re always asked, “What about the rapists?” Lately, the question has been phrased like this: “Well, surely you don’t mean that R. Kelly shouldn’t be in prison?” We do.

What we tell people is this: the criminal legal system will never “bring to justice” every person who does harm in our society. This is impossible. We cannot under any system “prosecute” our way out of harm. As a strategy for justly evaluating and adjudicating sexual harm, the criminal legal system has proven, empirically and qualitatively, an utter failure. Relying on it as the sole response to sexual violence has failed to offer opportunities for accountability and healing for those directly impacted by that violence; in fact, the criminal legal system does not even purport to care about whether survivors of sexual violence heal. Billions of dollars are poured yearly into a criminal legal system most people involved in proceedings of say doesn’t deliver the justice they seek.

~ Mariame Kaba and Rachel Herzing, We Do This 'Til We Free Us, “Transforming Punishment: What Is Accountability without Punishment?”

Excerpt:

Although Shaw’s action was particularly dramatic, rebellion on the part of prisoners and detainees in the face of inhumane conditions is not rare. In prisons, jails, and detention centers all across the country, prisoners and detainees are consistently participating in a mostly spontaneous, decentralized, and often leaderless social movement against the United States’ massive, and historically unprecedented, carceral archipelago. Most of those actions pass largely unnoticed as law enforcement agencies and departments of correction work to minimize their social impact.

Abolish Criminology presents critical scholarship on criminology and criminal justice ideologies and practices, alongside emerging freedom-driven visions and practices for new world formations.

The book introduces readers to a detailed history and analysis of crime as a concept and its colonizing trajectories into existence and enforcement. These significant contexts buried within peculiar academic histories and classroom practices are often overlooked or unknown outside academic and public discussions, causing the impact of racializing-gendering-sexualizing histories to extend and grow through criminology’s creation of crime, extending how the concept is weaponized and enforced through the criminal legal system. It offers written, visual, and poetic teachings from the perspectives of students, professors, imprisoned and formerly imprisoned persons, and artists. This allows readers to engage in multi-sensory, inter-disciplinary, and multi-perspective teachings on criminology’s often discussed but seldom interrogated mythologies on violence and danger, and their wide-reaching enforcements through the criminal legal system’s research, theories, agencies, and dominant cultures.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/4661775

Le documentaire "Produire la menace" révèle comment les agences de sécurité canadiennes incitent des citoyens vulnérables à commettre des crimes pour justifier leurs budgets. Il se concentre sur l'histoire de John (Omar) Nuttall et Amanda (Ana) Korody, manipulés par la police pour tenter un attentat. Bien que libérés, cette tactique est répandue. Les coûts de sécurité augmentent avec l'utilisation d'agents provocateurs, alimentant une industrie de plusieurs milliards de dollars. L'opacité entourant les services secrets rend difficile de connaître l'étendue de ces pratiques. Le film vise à sensibiliser le public à ces méthodes et à leur utilisation potentielle contre des groupes environnementalistes et autochtones.