The first contention: our current prison/"justice" system is not currently working properly. (Reasons for prison reform)
Evidence:
1. The system is racist at all levels--people of color are not only more likely to be pulled over, questioned, or otherwise harassed by the police, but they are also more likely to be convicted of their charges (even in the face of exonerating evidence), receive longer prison prison sentences for the same crimes, and be denied parole. I could go on about this, but won't. Might provide some links.
2. The system is also classist. Low-income communities, poor/working-class areas are over-policed. People from working-class background face many challenges in the court system, some of which are similar to those faced by people of color, some of which are related to the difficulty of getting your own lawyer (public defenders are terribly overworked, and sometimes meet their clients a mere 5 minutes before trial...), or other issues. Once again, because of discrimination against poor people, juries tend to be harsher on people who are obviously from working class backgrounds (anyone seen 12 Angry Men??).
3. The very definition of a crime is messed up. "Loitering" and "trespassing" in public parks is often a crime, and many other laws target working class people or the homeless--you can be arrested for unpaid parking tickets, yet few of the rich people who routinely evade taxes are even investigated. Once you get a ticket for a crime like loitering, if you are homeless you may not be able to pay, which lands you in jail, which makes it harder.... Not to mention that stealing cars usually comes with more consequences than stealing millions of dollars from thousands of people (back to class: blue-collar vs. white-collar crime). Many forms of rape aren't even legally considered rape.
4. Political prisoners are also treated terribly. There are a surprising number of them languishing still in US jails. Their crimes range from Communism to working in liberation or the anti-war movements in the 1960's and 70's to (and this actually happened) giving a speech about how you can cost corporations money by sending them completely black faxes. Demonstrating outside of the Republican National Convention. WTO, anyone? Many of these crimes also have very inflated sentences, and people have been arrested for doing no more than exercising their first amendment rights. While arguably not as bad as in the 1960's and 70's, when the FBI was openly killing activists without even covering up the evidence (Fred Hampton--left the bloody sheets and bullet holes proving he never could have fired), the level of surveillance and repression of activists of all types of downright scary. Most of these activists their watching are struggling for things like social justice and trying to do good.
5. Did I mention selective enforcement? Think back to all the celebrities who usually get off scot-free or with very low sentences for drug, alcohol, or sex-related crimes. Many people who normally have no problem with the punitive aspect of the criminal justice system cried that it would be unfair for Roman Polanski to serve time for his crime of providing alcohol and drugs to a 13-year old, then raping her multiple times in multiple ways while she continued to say no. After all, that was many years ago, he has a wife and kids, etc, etc. More on sexual violence later, but suffice it to say that if it's unfair to him, it's unfair to everyone. We shouldn't let everyone off the hook, just think of a better system. After all...
The second contention: Prisons don't prevent crime. (Reasons for prison abolition)
The only way they could ever do this is if we locked up each and every person who ever broke any law (probably most of us, right?) for life. Even then, crime within prison--which is rampant in certain forms, and which guard often condone or even engage in--would continue. However, incarcerating people has not been shown to reduce the amount of crimes people commit. In fact, prisons and jails are considered revolving doors by many because of the high rates of recidivism (re-offense). This is for lots of reasons, but here are a few.
1. Prison, by definition, is designed to punish, not to rehabilitate. What skills are prisoners learning in prison? Usually not job skills, although that happens sometimes. More often, it's easier to forge criminal connections with fellow inmates. Prisons sometimes get people more involved in crime than before. In addition, the punishment prisoners receive in prison can be very intense--and according to the UN and Amnesty International, sometimes inhumane and in violation of many treaties to which the US is a signatory, as well as our own laws. This takes a mental and emotional toll on many prisoners that hampers their recovery once outside.
2. Once out of prison, job opportunities are limited. For many jobs, even a marijuana possession conviction (and let's be real, think about what percentage of people in Seattle have had some point in their life smoked pot or at least had it in their possession) makes you ineligible or drastically reduces your chances of being hired. Once again, you often don't gain knowledge or skills relevant to the legal workforce, and you usually don't gain experience in a field either.
3. In addition, you probably don't have a place of your own anymore (certainly for working-class prisoners this is usually the case). However, staying with family or friends, if they are on certain types of government aid, may jeopardize their ability to stay on that aid. If you are lucky to have family or friends in the area who are willing to take you in, you still may not be able to take them up on it if you were convicted of a gang-related charge. For many of these charges, ex-prisoners are banned from going into certain areas or else they violate their parole and go back into prison. For example, the entire Central District. Given that the CD is the historically Black area in Seattle, if you are black and grew up there, many people you know probably still live there....
4. Parole is also very easy to violate at times. I used to volunteer in juvie, and a kid got locked back up for violating parole because he was "associating" with a felon. His older brother. This kid was only 14--was he supposed to just move out, cut off his family, and support himself? There are many other examples.
5. Rehabilitative, community justice, and other alternative models have been shown to be more effective at reducing crime than prisons. Re-entry and drug rehab programs that take place at alternate facilities and avoid incarcerating people tend to have much lower rates of re-offense.
6. Speaking of drugs... prisons don't usually deal with drug addictions. There are waiting lists of over a year at many rehab centers--and some drugs are dangerous to go off on your own because you can die--but while you're waiting you can still be imprisoned for years for possession. Even though you were trying to get help.
7. Prisons also have a terrible record of dealing with mental health issues, and the system usually ignores when crimes are committed by the mentally ill, unless you can get them classified as "insane," in which case people are generally institutionalized in mental health institutions rather than prisons.
8!!! Prevention is best/solve sources of crime. All prisons can do is react to crimes already committed. They don't deal with things that cause crime: poverty, inequality, a culture of impunity (around certain crimes), drug addictions, mental health issues, cycles of violence, lack of [insert basic need], institutional oppression, etc. We deal to deal with these issues or else crime will just continue to happen.
9!!! Doing a bad thing does not make you a bad person automatically.. We all make mistakes. Some crimes, like rape, are fairly socially acceptable in that we live in a rape culture that blames victims and creates excuses for perpetrators. See www.thecurvature.com for good discussions on rape culture and "unrapeability." We need to change the way we perceive the world around us and educate youth. Not lock people up.
Third contention: prison is very expensive
Prison is expensive to run. In fact, many of the rehabilitative programs that take place in alternate centers both have better results and are cheaper to run! Why aren't we running to start more of these programs? The cultural impulse to "make people pay" for what they've done, even when it's counter-productive. People don't care how much prison costs, but they do care when jails start paying for cable. Because prisoners don't deserve anything other than a cold hard jail cell and three pieces of bread a day.
Rebuttal: Murders and rapists
Usually when I talk to people about my views, they always want to know about the murderers and the rapists. First of all, murderers, rapists, and ALL other violent offenders account for about 20% of all prisoners (Human Rights Coalition). Letting all the non-violent offenders out of jail would get rid of most prisons. Moreover, murderers, rapists, and pedophiles combined make up less than 1% of the prison population (Critical Resistance). 1%!!!! Even if we kept these folks in, we'd practically be at prison abolition already.
Plus, many murderers, rapists, and pedophiles aren't in jail anyway. Think about all the police who murder innocent civilians but are acquitted of wrong-doing because it was "an accident." That's what the crime of manslaughter is there for, folks. Think about all the priests who were never jailed. And the vast majority of rapists are never even accused of a crime. Even the government estimates that only about 40% of rapes are reported, my guess is that the figure is much higher. That's not even looking at the number of unreported prison rapes because, I'm sorry, stealing a gold necklace doesn't mean other prisoners and guards should be able to rape you. Raping someone doesn't mean someone else should be able to rape you. Rape is rape and rape is unacceptable. End of story. Continuing on... only about 4-6% of *reported* rapes end in conviction. That leaves us with the conservative estimate that about 1.6-2.4% of rapes end in conviction. Even with repeat offenders, 90-95% probably never serve jail time. When you think about the fact that various government agencies estimate that between 1 out of 4 and 1 out of 6 women are sexually assaulted at least once, that means that, even accounting for repeat offenders, a significant percentage of the male population has probably committed sexual assault.*** Many will even admit to it in surveys.... as long as you don't use the words rape or assault. Scary??? It should be, since the current prison-industrial complex isn't protecting you from the vast majority anyway... (Will post more on the specifics of this issue later.)
There are many others who have written on this subject. Prison reform/abolition organizations include Critical Resistance, Human Rights Coalition, and Prison Activist Resource Center. Check out works by Angela Davis, Betty Pettit, and Loic Wacquant, among many others.
Bloggers include Renee at Womanist Musings (check out http://www.womanist-musings.com/2010/10/we-create-recidivism.html), Karnythia at www.theangryblackwoman.com, Cara at www.thecurvature.com (focus on violence against women and sexual violence), and many more! I'm much indebted to these bloggers and the blogosphere in generally for helping to shape my thinking around this and many other issues.
***Female-on-female, male-on-male, and female-on-male sexual assault does occur, but the vast majority are male-on-female, thus my focus. However, men are even less likely to report rape, so the figures we have on that are even less reliable and I'm sure rates are higher than we'd like to believe.
