What We Believe
We believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure. As such, our work is part of global struggles against inequality and powerlessness. The success of the movement requires that it reflect communities most affected by the PIC. Because we seek to abolish the PIC, we cannot support any work that extends its life or scope.
Frequently Asked Questions
- But, what about the murderers, rapists and pedophiles?
- If prisons and policing aren't the answers, then what?
- Isn't abolition utopian folly? Abolition doesn't seem like a real possibility in my lifetime or ever?
- But how will we be safe without prisons and policing?
QUESTION: But, what about the murderers, rapists and pedophiles?
Obviously, murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children are very serious problems, and obviously, acts of great harm bring up feelings of anger and fear. Given how grave these problems are, we need to examine whether locking someone in a cage is the best way to prevent these harms?
Public Policy 101 dictates that the solution needs to address the problem. It is disastrous public policy to propose ill suited solutions simply because you don't solve the problem.
It is also important to note that of the approximately 2.5 million people locked in US prisons and jails only a very small number - about 1 % -- are there for these horrendous offenses. Many people do not believe that locking someone in a cage is an answer to drug addiction or poverty. If locking someone up does not address these problems, why would locking someone in a cage be any more of an effective answer to harm between people?
Prisons are not about reducing harm in our communities and in fact, our own experiences and studies have found that imprisonment actually serves to destabilize our communities. Prisons are violent institutions that only perpetuate violence and prisons as a public policy solution have failed to create safe communities.
QUESTION: If prisons and policing aren't the answers, then what?
The answer lies in developing systems of harm prevention and when harm still occurs, because it will, systems of accountability and ways to address the causes of the harm that do not rely on the failed, back end response of locking someone up.
Even the most horrendous forms of harm do not happen without a reason. Awareness of why harm occurred is the first step in preventing future harms. For example, we know that people who commit acts of harm often have been harmed themselves in the past. We also can not see individual acts of harm in isolation, as disconnected with the larger the world, the social and economic conditions that lead to harm.
Abolition does not mean that we don't hold people accountable for their actions. But punishment creates the opposite of accountability -- a sense of social isolation instead of responsibility to others. If anything, punishment makes future harm more likely since it encourages people to lash out. People who have seriously harmed another need appropriate forms of support, supervision and social and economic resources.
We don't claim to have all the answers. In reality, we know that the dominance of prisons as an response to harm has kept many alternatives from developing. But we also do know that alternatives exist. In post-apartheid South Africa, for example, rather than try, punish and potentially imprison those who had done harm to others under apartheid, the new government set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Commission heard testimony of people who took responsibility for their actions and were held accountable without imprisonment. While the system may not have functioned perfectly, it does provide an alternative model for even horrendous offenses such as the genocide that occurred under apartheid.
QUESTION: Isn't abolition utopian folly? Abolition doesn't seem like a real possibility in my lifetime or ever?
Abolition is not utopian folly. In the history of the world, there have been many institutions that appeared unchangeable. The Roman Empire lasted a millennium before it fell and, just 25 years before its fall, its expansion was extraordinary.
Until the late 18th century, when the British slavery abolitionist movement began, the idea of eliminating one of the fundamental aspects of the British Empire's economy was unimaginable. Yet through persistent effort, 12 individuals who first met in a London print shop in 1787 managed to create enough social turbulence that 51 years later, the slave ships stopped sailing, and slavery was abolished in Britain.
In the US, the first slavery abolitionists arose with the American Revolution, but it took almost a century to abolish slavery in the US. Meanwhile, slavery abolitionists were represented in the dominant media as extremists and fanatics.
Similarly, segregation ruled the South until it was outlawed almost a century after the abolition of slavery. Many who lived under Jim Crow could not envision a legal system not specifically defined by racial inequality.
Inventor Buckminster Fuller compared the potential impact of a single individual on large societal problems to that of a ship's rudder: The rudder is relatively tiny, but by creating turbulence in the water it moves the ship.
Historian Adam Hoschschild wrote: "The fact that the battle against slavery was won must give us pause when considering great modern injustices, such as the gap between rich and poor, nuclear proliferation and war. None of these problems will be solved overnight, or perhaps even in the fifty years it took to end British slavery. But they will not be solved at all unless people see them as both outrageous and solvable."
QUESTION: But how will we be safe without prisons and policing?
Take a minute and think about what makes you feel safe - your home? Your family? Your friends? While some people may say that prisons and police in your community make you feel safe, many of us most impacted by prisons and policing will not.
We see that prisons and rampant policing have served to destabilize our communities, largely communities of color and poor communities - removing family members from our communities, draining resources for essential social services, and pushing us to fear each other.
We know that crime rates began to fall long before the prison boom of the 1980's. We know that states with more people in prison and more prisons did not experience any more dramatic drops in crime than states with lower incarceration rates and fewer prisons. Similarly, we know that counties in California that chose to not strictly enforce that state's Three Strikes law experienced drops in crime similar to counties that strictly enforced the law. In short, we know that prisons don't make us safe. And we know that having our basic needs met does make us feel safe.
In the past two decades, the number of people in prison in the U.S. increased 400%.