Abolitionism

Question 1

What are key readings?

Answer 1

Davis

Question 2

What are the key points from Davis?

Answer 2

Prison is a ‘permanent feature of our social lives’ p.3
Prison being a natural environment
Black, latin and native Americans more likely to go to prison
2x with mental illness in prison than in psych hospitals in the USA
200,000 in prison
20% of the prison population from the USA
‘mass incarceration during that period has little to no effect on official crime rates’ during the Reagan Era (tough on crime)p.4
More women in California in orison than in the country in the 1970s
Imprisonment as a reservation for the othered, people of colour
People who are economically disadvantaged as ‘candidates for prison p.6
‘prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of comtemporary capitalism is deposited
Prison system evolved from systems of racial oppression, particularly targeting African Americans post-slavery through mechanisms like convict leasing and Jim Crow laws.
Rise of penitentiaries in the 18th and 19th centuries, originally intended as sites of moral reform but quickly becoming dehumanising institutions.

Question 3

What was in the Abolitionist Horizon for Police Reform?

Answer 3

Legal scholarship remains fixated on investing in the police to recalibrate and relegitimate their social function without paying sufficient attention to alternate frameworks for reform.
Calls to defund the police
Redressing police violece by diminishing police function

Question 4

Who made the An Abolitionist Horizon for Police Reform?

Answer 4

Akbar 2020

Question 5

What is penal populism?

Answer 5

The perception that prisoners are favoured at the expense of crime victims
Feelings of abandonment
Promose of rapid change
Us vs them narrative (Pratt, 2007

Question 6

What are the statistics from the Prison Policy initative? (US)

Answer 6

1351000 prisoners in state prisons
646000 in local jails
211000 in federal prisons

Question 7

What are the findings from Prison reform trust?

Answer 7

Scotland, E & W have the highest imprisonmnt rates in western Europe

Question 8

What are the official prison population figures for 2024 September?

Answer 8

88521= tota;
Useble operational capacitu is 89619
Prison population projection to increase 10580

Question 9

What happened due to the 2024 riots?

Answer 9

1380 arrests
863 charges up until that date
Riots could have destabilised England’s prisons

Question 10

What is early release?

Answer 10

Labour governmnt changed release point after serving 40%
Does not apply to all prisoners

Question 11

What does the New Jim Crow 2010 speak about?

Answer 11

Felony records as a badge of inferiority
New form of racial caste system
Expansion of Death Penalty
4.5 million under state control

Question 12

What is the prison industrial complex?

Answer 12

Prisoners used as a labour force
Lack of incentive to stop crime from occurring for major companies
Claims to address crime and violence but creates violence ad destroys communities, drives the conditions for crime such as drug usage
Saves 3 million a year by making detainees do their own cooking, cleaning

Question 13

Who spoke about prisons and social harms?

Answer 13

Hillyard and Tombs

Question 14

What does Hilyard and Tombs say?

Answer 14

Physical harm (harms involving death, injury or illness)
Financial harm (harming the income, job security or credit rating of individuals)
Psychological harm (such as mental illness or anxiety)
Cultural harm (Hillyard and Tombs= ‘threats to cultural safety’ – such as racism or disruptions to community life – but you can consider it quite broadly for the purposes of this activity).

Question 15

What are the indicative statistics for Hillyard and Tombs? (Prison reform trust)

Answer 15

396 deaths in custody (>June 2021)
52000+ self harm incidents (>March 2021).
Nearly half of adults (48%) are reconvicted of another offence within one year of release (MoJ 2021)

Question 16

What is trauma and exile used for?

Answer 16

Solving complex social problems

Question 17

What did the Welsh ACE study find?

Answer 17

47% of respondents reported having experienced at least one ACE and 14% experiencing four or more ACEs.

Question 18

What are the pains of imprisonment? (Sykes) 1965

Answer 18

Austere physical surroundings
The single-sex environment which challenges the individual’s sense of masculinity
the constant threat of violence from others

Question 19

What is abolitionism?

Answer 19

It can ‘offer radical policy solutions, which both critique and transcend what currently passes for penal policy’ (Sim, 2009
Set of perspective based on moral conviction that social life cannot b regulated by criminal law, De Haan 1991

Question 20

What is the history of abolitionism?

Answer 20

Youth being criminalised 1990-2000s
Roots with slave trade and colonialism
1970s= due to the uprises (when abolitionist was more prominent )
Fights for changes to prisons (treatment in prison and administration, and the conditions) but there was a lack of change

Question 21

Who coined the cycle of Abolitionism?

Answer 21

De Haan 1991

Question 22

What did De Haan find?

Answer 22

Crime a result of the social order
Humanisation of prison followed by eventual replacement
Punishment as a self producing form of violence
Current approach pays reference to dramatic incident rather than environmental context
Decriminalisation, destigmatisation social troubles cause by accident than criminal intent

Question 23

What did Davis propose?

Answer 23

Prisons functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited
A continuum of alternatives to imprisonment

Question 24

What is the abolitionist agenda?

Answer 24

Recognising the blurred lines between perpetrator/victim and cycles of violence.
Let go of the desire to discover one single alternative system of punishment.
Decarceration as our overarching strategy.
Care and support to reduce offending rather than criminal justice.

Question 25

What are the abolitionist futures?

Answer 25

Close existing prisons
‘Shrinking’ the system
Offences dealt with within a public health framework rather than CJ one

Question 26

What is transformative abolitionism?

Answer 26

Radical approaches to dealing with crime.
Prison abolition for serious crimes as well as non-violent offences.
Normative ways of dealing with conflict BEYOND the police through community accountability

Question 27

What are the challenges for achieving abolitionism?

Answer 27

Nothing can change on the ground if problematic power structures higher up society remain in place (e.g. capitalism
Change requires real alternatives to prison, not simply incarceration by another name & net-widening policies
Dismantle the belief that ‘privatising’ justice services & ‘prisons/probation for profit’ is an acceptable model.