Can we imagine a world without prisons?
It’s easy to agree that our prison system is flawed. In too many cases, the prisoners’ living conditions are harsh, if not inhumane. While many people would insist that jail time has to be somewhat harsh – “it’s meant to be a punishment after all” – most of them would also agree that there is a threshold of harshness that should not be surpassed. The recent protests about the way that various governments handled the pandemic with regard to prisons illustrate this point: no matter what prisoners may have done, they are entitled to protection from the spread of a disease that could probably kill them.
Harsh living conditions are not the only way that prison systems are failing. Prisons can serve as schools for crime, especially in the case of minor offenders. Moreover, the social stigma that accompanies former prisoners makes it difficult for them to reintegrate into society even though they have served their sentence. A relatively short prison sentence can have a huge impact on one’s life, narrowing down educational, professional, and social opportunities. This is not to mention the disproportionate presence of people of colour, or immigrants, in jails. Then there’s the fact that justice seems to be class-sensitive – it’s easier to avoid prison if you’re rich and can pay the requested bail. Considering all that, it seems that our criminal justice systems unfairly reinforce existing social inequalities.
“We need to shift our focus from the individual offender to the social function of the institution of prisons”
Prison abolition instead of reform?
These failings of the prison system have given rise to widespread arguments for prison reform. But they have also led certain people to take a more radical stance and call for the abolition of prisons altogether. A central claim of the supporters of prison abolition is that we need to shift our focus from the individual offender to the social function of the institution of prisons. This allows us to reconceptualise prisons not as a way to punish individuals for the commitment of certain crimes, but as a way to control certain parts of the population and preserve the current economic and political system. Globalised capitalist economies and the deindustrialization of many formerly industrial areas lead large numbers of people to poverty and unemployment. Prisons are the system’s way to solve the problems that it itself produces by controlling parts of the population that would potentially challenge its logic. While they are regularly presented as necessary for the preservation of moral order, numerous surveys suggest that they fail to do so. Instead, they certainly play a role in maintaining an immoral order –that which subjugates the most disadvantaged members of society and ensures the preservation of an unfair status quo.
“Prisons are not the only possible response to criminality. They are the response that the current social and economical system has developed”
Those who call for the abolition of prisons remind us that, far from being the obvious response to criminal behavior, prisons are a relatively recent institution: it was only in the 18th century that they became the principal mode of punishment in Europe, and not until the 19th century in the United States. In other parts of the world, prison systems were instituted mainly through colonialism. Certainly, antisocial human behaviours were recognised as crimes well before that. So, prisons are not the only possible response to criminality. They are the response that the current social and economical system has developed, in order to address criminal behaviours – criminal behaviours that are often related to the poverty and the marginalization that this system creates. The abolitionist alternative points to the failures of the prison system and calls us to consider different solutions to the problem: instead of imprisoning people, it would be much more fair and effective to provide housing to the homeless, jobs to the jobless, education to the illiterate, and welfare support to those in need. It is only by breaking the circle of violence, abolitionists suggest, that we can create a just world.
A naive and dangerous idea?
Why then are we met with such resistance, when we try to envisage a world without prisons? A crucial reason is that we don’t necessarily want to abolish the concept of ‘crime’ altogether. Even if some criminal behaviours are the result of broader social conditions, this is not the case with all forms of crime. People may grant that crimes against property are better prevented by funding welfare programmes and creating jobs. Some may even grant that it is unfair to punish people for crimes they committed under conditions of social deprivation. But what about other types of criminal behavior? What about murders, what about rapes? Don’t we need prisons to protect society from these criminals? And what about white-collar crimes, which do not result from social exclusion?
It seems as if prison abolitionism operates with the background assumption that, in a world of social justice, criminality would cease to exist. But isn’t this thought naïve? Doesn’t it presuppose the idea that humans are fundamentally good, and refuse to acknowledge the darker side of human beings? Human history gives us plenty of reasons to reject this view. Opponents of abolitionism see the call to abolish prisons as at best unrealistic and at worst, dangerous.
Is abolitionism more utopian than prisons?
Do we have to give up the abolition of prisons as a utopian dream and stick to the current prison system? Not necessarily. According to Michael J. Coyle, Professor of Social Science and Criminal Justice, the current criminal justice systems rely on even more utopian premises than abolitionism. Consider, first of all, the way that criminal justice represents humans, presupposing a majority of good, law-abiding citizens and few bad criminals who have to be contained. This representation is itself utopian. As empirical data demonstrate, almost everyone exercises some kind of criminal behaviour during their lifespan, and thus becomes eligible for the application of criminal law. Whether a person is actually penalized for this criminal behavior, though, largely depends on their economic and social status. In the case of prison - where being detained or serving a sentence often depends on one’s ability to pay for bail or to convert the prison sentence onto a fine – this discrepancy is all the more stark. We all commit crimes sometimes, but the consequences differ depending on one’s social and economic status. The imaginary law-abiding community which is threatened by the criminal behavior of a few transgressors is simply a fiction. Like many fictions, it serves to preserve current socioeconomic inequalities.
There is a second way in which our criminal justice systems are utopian, and it has to do with their conception of punishment as an effective mechanism to prevent crime. Again, this disregards expansive empirical data which contest whether we can effectively control human behavior through the threat of imprisonment. According to various social scientists, this is only true in limited cases. Most of the time, it is the broader socioeconomic conditions that determine whether people will commit crimes or not. Moreover, the belief that time spent in prison will transform people from criminals to good members of society, conceives prisons as some kind of “rehabilitation utopias.” Considering the situation in the vast majority of prisons, it’s hard to find a strong theoretical underpinning for this belief. According to Coyle, those who take part in the implementation of criminal justice – police officers, judges, prosecutors – are often aware of the failure of the prison system. However, the fiction of an effective prison system persists.
Third, criminal justice is utopian in its representation of imprisonment as a practice that serves the interests of society. According to the utopian image, prisons keep us safe, protecting us from criminals and allowing us to live in harmonious relationships with each other. This is far from reality. Each time a person is imprisoned, families, children, and communities are denied valuable relationships and resources. Often, the living conditions of the family members of those imprisoned deteriorate. Sometimes, they are stigmatised. Social exclusion is accentuated. Simultaneously, the vast majority of crimes are never punished. The criminal justice system, blind to the socioeconomic conditions which determine what counts as criminal behavior and who goes to jail, either does not conceive of certain behaviours as criminal, or is lenient toward those who commit them.
“It seems that prison abolition is no more utopian than the current prison system”
So, it seems that prison abolition is no more utopian than the current prison system. On the contrary, it could plausibly be argued that it is less so. By taking into account the socio-economic conditions under which crimes are committed, prison abolitionism provides convincing alternatives to fight criminality. After all, it is well established that education and better living conditions diminish criminality. Funding community projects rather than building more prisons may be a more realistic policy to drop crime rates. And restorative practices, such as community work or restitution to the victims may be much more effective than imprisonment in deterring future transgressions. In this light, prison abolitionism does not appear to naïvely presuppose a fundamentally good human nature. Instead, it acknowledges that human behavior is influenced by the prevailing social conditions and takes the necessary measures to create these conditions that would reduce transgressions.
Taking abolitionism seriously
Still, what about murderers? What about rapists? Instead of imprisonment, abolitionists suggest that we should respond to crime through alternative, restorative practices, such as community work or restitution to the victims. In the case of white-collar crimes, these restorative practices may be more effective than imprisonment. But what about those people who are truly dangerous? Abolitionism suggests that we have to break the circle of violence, but sometimes societies need to protect themselves. The same goes for individuals, who have suffered from the transgressions. Especially in cases of domestic violence, it is difficult to accept that people who have been beating their wives and children should be free to return to their homes and continue their abusive behaviour. Last, we have to consider the victims’ need to see those who have harmed them pay for their behaviour. Doesn’t this mean that abolitionism is implausible, or even dangerous?
“We have to take abolitionism seriously and pay attention to what it is really proposing”
Again, not necessarily. We have to take abolitionism seriously and pay attention to what it is really proposing. Abolitionists are not suggesting that we should just close all jails overnight and release all prisoners to society. The abolition of prisons does not mean that criminal behaviours would go unpunished. Rather, abolitionism calls us to reexamine what counts as crime and redefine our response to it. This means that the victims’ need to see transgressors pay could be satisfied. And it is possible to imagine ways of protecting the victims from the repetition of the transgression without involving imprisonment. Abusive husbands, for example, could be forced to move to another house, and keep distance from the people they have abused. If not always, at least in many cases we can imagine ways of dealing with crimes that would be more effective and more just than imprisonment. Admittedly, these restorative practices will not always suffice to deter crime. However, they will treat people in a more humane way, put forth a different conception of justice, and make more resources available to the communities.
In the long term, abolitionism aspires to be even more effective against crime. Abolitionists are not proposing to dismantle the facilities of prisons, while keeping the surrounding system that made them possible intact. Instead, they are calling for the transformation of the broader social, economic, and political conditions which perpetuate oppression and enable the commitment of various forms of crime. In a world in which extensive power inequalities would not exist, crimes would be fewer, not because humans would somehow turn into angels, but because the oppressive structures that make them possible would not exist. Abolitionism demonstrates how, to a large extent, crime is a product of an unjust system. In the just world that it envisages, criminal behaviours may still exist, but they would not be systematic. Thus, crime would be both rarer and easier to dismantle.
Of course, whether such a world is possible is an open question. How to make such a world real is even more uncertain. In this sense, the abolitionist vision may indeed be utopian. Still, the abolitionist critique successfully demonstrates the ways in which, instead of achieving social justice, the current prison system perpetuates oppression. One may endorse abolitionism or ultimately hold to the necessity of prisons. But trying to imagine a world without prisons, and what it would take to achieve it, is valuable on its own. Taking the abolitionist argument seriously is trying to imagine a more just world.
Further resources:
Rachel Kushner. “Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind.” The New York Times, April 17, 2019. Available here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/magazine/prison-abolition-ruth-wilson-gilmore.html
Coyle, Michael J. “Who Is Mired in Utopia? The Logics of Criminal Justice and Penal Abolition.” Social Justice 45, no. 4 (154) (2018): 79-116. Accessed February 21, 2021. doi:10.2307/26873826.
Davis, Angela Yvonne. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition In Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
Knopp, Fay Honey, Barbara Boward, and Mark O. Morris. Instead of prisons: a handbook for abolitionists. Syracuse: Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976. Available here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/
I owe many of the ideas which inspired this piece to the colourful discussion that took place during a session of the reading group on “Black Feminist Thought” convened by Julia Willam, with participants from King’s College London and the University of Warsaw.
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Donna Ferrato - 1988
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“Sin Barras protest downtown Santa Cruz”, by Richard Masoner/Cyclelicious
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Gideon Mendel - 1985
The Pollsmoor March: Police attack demonstrators with sjamboks (rubber whips) as thousands of marchers attempt to set off from different points in Cape Town to Pollsmoor Prison to demand the release of Nelson Mandela