No, this community is totally geared towards the abolition of police and prisons. The confusion comes from that abolitionists like myself are in favor of reforming police and prisons in such a way to shrink their size and power until they are ultimately abolished. Although not all reform is made equal. Some reforms merely reinforce the police and prison system instead of delimiting and shrinking it. We are against those reforms.
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Abolition of police and prisons
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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.
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Active prison reform until the ultimate abolishment of punitive detainment?
Can you define the prisons you are in favor of abolishing?
Maybe the broadness of that term is what's difficult for me to understand.
The system that abolitionists want to abolish is the carceral system, an entire system geared towards social control that includes policing, incarceration, surveillance, punishment etc. Some abolitionists are anarchist like myself, so those kinds of abolitionists want to abolish the state and capitalism too.
That makes much more sense, focusing on rehabilitation and prison reform, re-forming the criminal justice system.
What I'm hearing from the community here, though, is "this is bad" rather than "this is how to make it better."
Abolition of what I'm assuming it's the American carceral system makes sense, and it needs some discrete goals to focus on, rather than "not what we have now".
A lack of practical solutions is where anarchism rises or stagnates.
The pirate party in Sweden successes because their mission was very clear, to reform copyright law from punitive for consumers to practical for the artists, and then on strengthening the right to privacy.
Any "abolition" movement should have clear stated intentions; getting rid of broad foundations of the current system without even theoretical replacements or organization necessarily results in an entropic echo chamber of ultimately dead air.
You're making a lot of assumptions without doing the work of engagement. You're literally making stuff up about what abolitionists and anarchists believe. Please instead read something by Interrupting Criminalization or Critical Resistance instead of making stuff up.
I'm directly responding to the community info, the posts made in the community, and your responses with very specific suggestions and concrete examples.
Browsing a small sub hardly gives you mastery over a subject matter. Please do some self-study instead of making bad assumptions.
I think the content here is pretty much in line with the name of the community. Never really saw anything that I would label reformist.
Thanks, I did read the community info and recent posts and understand that while the community itself is definitively focused on prison reform, it's using the word "abolition" to telegraph how far reform must go.
Abolish purely punitive detainment and focus on rehabilitative detainment.
I can see how a catchy slogan with that complex sentiment is more difficult to nail down.
No, prison abolition means the abolition of all detainment.
Oh. How do you rehabilitate actively harmful societal elements within that context if they are allowed to continue having society at any moment?
My take: Well if the leave, the problem somehow took care of themselves. Ideally other communities would be informed about that fact, so the dangerous person has to take accountability before joining another community without working on themselves. So by leaving they are potentially choosing exile till they are ready to actively work on themselves. Idk how that would work for those that dont have a real choice because of a personality disorder or similar things.
Criminals are created, not born. If we address the root causes of criminality, then criminals disappear. You cannot address the root causes of criminality if you imprison people.
Criminals may disappear; others will appear.
Many statistically equitable and privileged citizens still regularly become criminals, but there should certainly be an effort by less equitable societies to mirror the legislative successes of those more equitable.
Abolition means also the abolition of criminal laws. Criminalization defines who in society are deemed as disposable. After criminality has been abolished, this will not mean that harm and conflict disappear. Rather, abolition means dealing with harm and conflict in a healthy way.
That is reform, not abolition.
It's already being done by other countries.
You're also defining criminalization here in a way that it's not commonly used, so a community-specific dictionary would help focus your community.
The words being used in this community have different standard meanings than how you're using them, and you're saying that the way you're using them is how they're meant to be interpreted.
If these words are meant to be interpreted in a specialized way, but you don't explain those new definitions beforehand, it isn't surprising that you're going to get some pushback by claiming that blue is red.
Again, abolition includes reform, but its ultimate goal is the revolutionary abolition of the carceral system.
As for definitions, surely you can be smart enough to realize dictionary definitions aren't the be all end all? Besides, my patience wears thin and I am beginning to believe you're not here to engage in good faith, so I'm becoming increasingly disinterested in continuing this conversation.