Today, approximately 565 per 100,000 residents are living in prison, for a total of 1.9 million inmates, making the United States the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Reportedly, the U.S. government spends roughly $80.7 billion per year on mass incarceration. That’s so high-priced, isn’t it?’
Well, that’s what underlies the proposed abolition of prisons by a network of activists called the Prison Abolition Movement. Their vision is basically a future without prison. However, the argument about abolishing prisons does not satisfy all parties and is only considered a joke as a desire that is impossible to achieve.
Since it was proposed, this group has faced a lot of denial from various parties, who continue to question: if prisons are abolished, what happens to the murderers, and where will they go? Isn’t that clearly unfair to the victims? That’s what we’ll discuss in this post. Okay, let’s dive into ours to find the real facts!
Where Do Murderers Go When Prisons Are Abolished?
The groups of the Prison Abolition Movement emphasized that what they will do to murderers is what the prisons currently do to them in a more humane way. They are basically trying to reduce or even eliminate the prison system and the prison itself and replace it with a rehabilitation system that does not focus on punishment as an implementation in running correctional institutions.
According to abolitionists, the murder rate will definitely go down if:
- Every citizen has easy access to investing in housing, employment, education, and health services.
- Lawmakers take gun violence seriously.
- De-escalation is taught in schools.
- There are resources for survivors, so they don’t have to be killed by their abuser or commit assault or murder in self-defense.
- Addicts have free and comprehensive mental health and drug treatment programs.
- People don’t have to steal or sell drugs to survive.
Abolitionists argue that these are the things that are actually needed to control the increasing number of murder cases in the United States, and these, of course, involve the support of many parties. They also assert that security in the United States is impossible to achieve if our physical, mental, and spiritual health is neglected.
For opponents of prison abolitionists, their statements were not satisfactory. Even though it might be successful, for them, the potential failure is what stands out most about the idea of abolishing prisons. According to them, how could the idea of abolishing prisons be successful in creating murderers who are allowed to roam free?
However, abolitionists think differently about where murder could actually be avoided if comprehensive solutions and support from various parties were intensified, like easy access for every individual or survivor to obtain supportive resources, including a stable economy, education, physical and mental health services, adequate employment opportunities, rehabilitation programs for drug addicts, and adequate housing.
What is the Cause of the High Number of Murder Cases in the United States Resulting in Prison?
Reportedly, income inequality is one of the strongest factors in a country’s murder rate. Also, it was found that people were more likely to be killed by someone they knew than by a stranger, with the main causes of murder including personal conflict and domestic violence.
Many people ignore the fact that more than half of female murder victims were killed by their intimate partners, and around 86% of women had to be imprisoned because they resisted their partners who committed physical and sexual violence against them, even though it was clearly an effort to defend themselves.
In addition, the fact that the police and prisons are the killers is often considered unreal, even though 1/3 of all murders of foreigners are committed by the police. However, of course, the people in this institution will not go to prison. Even if they could, citizens should plead with police departments to fire officers who kill people on camera, and this still hasn’t worked.
According to abolitionists, abolishing prisons would significantly lower the country’s murder rate. However, prisons also kill people directly and slowly every day. With the AIDS epidemic, which is called the “New Death Penalty Line” for prisoners, Hurricane Katrina, which killed people in prison because prison staff escaped by leaving them in flooded cells without food or water for days, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic, where many prisoners died due to lack of treatment, it became a spotlight that prisons were actually places of mass murder.
Overall, abolitionists think that going to prison does not prevent murder because these government institutions never address the underlying reasons people commit murder.
According to Abolitionists, Why Should Prisons Be Abolished?
Actually, the goal of the prison abolition movement is not really to abolish punishment for offenders, including murderers, but rather to change the punishment itself. According to abolitionists, prison abolition is something that really needs to be done, and we should open our minds to the fact that offenders must be placed in a position that allows them to correct their mistakes, not in a vicious cycle that triggers them to repeat their crimes after being released.
In addition to understanding the social conditions that lead many people to prison, they also hope that an abolitionist approach can really change our view of offenders as agents who have the capacity to effect change. That’s why the abolition of prisons really needs to be carried out in order to create a society built on care, mutual assistance, and community accountability.
Abolitionists point out the fact that since they were opened, prisons have been used to control and incarcerate those marginalized based on race, gender, and disability and protect those in power from being held accountable for the crimes they commit. In short, the prison system has failed so far, has not helped anyone, and has left the losses experienced by the victims unresolved.
Basically, prison is more about taking away human rights through confinement, isolation, and violence. The fact is that prison staff and officers are involved and even the main perpetrators of violence and sexual violence against prisoners, and this seems to silence us all by considering this to be normal because it is a form of punishment for violators.
According to abolitionists, locking people up with substandard services and little opportunity for self-development or the opportunity to confront the factors that led to their imprisonment and exposure to violence is not the way to punish and reduce recidivism. However, on the contrary, they are in a vicious circle where they will repeat the crimes they have committed and even commit new crimes out of a feeling of revenge for the physical and sexual violence they received while in prison.
Abolitionists hope that in the future educators, organizers, artists, athletes, intellectuals, and even ordinary people can play a major role in introducing a security system that is not tied to the idea that only police and prisons can guarantee security but that security depends on the role of all of us in society.
A bookworm and researcher especially related to law and citizenship education. I spend time every day in front of the internet and the campus library.
