Prison abolition movement is a social movement done by people to abolish prison. However, if you think that it is the same as the prison reform movement, it is different. The prison reform movement is a movement that demands to change the prison system to be fairer and more humane. So, when did the abolition movement start? Why did people start to make this movement?
How the Prison Abolition Movement Started
As explained on the Study site, the prison Abolition Movement started after the War on Drugs beginning in the 1960s. In the 1980s, the movement started to grow because of the increase of population in the U.S. prisons. In 1980, as explained on the Black Past site, the population of prison in the U.S. was around 500,000 and then in 1990, it increased to 1.3 million and in 2000, it became 2 million.
The leaders of the movement thought that there were too many people who were imprisoned while they did not something violent. There were a lot of prisoners because they could not hire a lawyer because they were poor.
Abolishing prisons does not mean that there is no punishment at all for criminals. However, the goal of this movement is to reform the criminal justice system by offering alternatives to change incarceration. Those who support this movement believe that imprisoning human beings is not justified. Besides, they also believe that a lot of crime happens because of the consequences of poverty and discrimination. So, they think that the causes need to be overcome. Putting criminals in a prison can only worsen the situation.
Anarchists also want to abolish all forms of state control and one of them is imprisonment. They want to abolish imprisonment because according to statistics, incarceration rates affect mainly poor people and ethnic minorities and in general, criminals are not rehabilitated and as a result it worsens their condition.
Read also: What Would Happen If We Abolish Prisons?
Cited from Black Past site, the goal of this movement is also to make people aware that it is not fair for people of color, especially African Americans, who are incarcerated, where there will be bad impact caused by the incarceration and when they are released, most of them do not have jobs so that they may return to commit crimes or to be burdens on the community. That’s why prison abolitionists believe that finding and overcoming the cause of criminal needs to be done.
Popular Abolitionists of Prison Abolition Movement
Angela Davis is one of the most popular prison abolitionists. Together with her organization named Critical Resistance, she makes efforts to challenge the criminal justice system to end over incarceration. Other groups such as the Prison Activist Resource Center (PARC) and Black & Pink also support prison abolition. The Human Right Coalition and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners are also organizations that want a different form of justice system.
As explained on the Black Past site, some activists of this movement have proposed some alternatives namely:
- Providing effective drug treatment program;
- Providing better resources for finding work or getting education when prisoners are imprisoned or after they are released;
- Doing volunteer work to increase prisoners’ social interaction.
In October 2015, a resolution that supports the prison abolition was released and adopted by members at a plenary session of the National Lawyers Guild.
There are a number of organizations in Canada that also support prison abolition including the Saskatchewan Manitoba Alberta Abolition Organization (SMAAC) or the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project. These organizations make collaborations and organize on issues related to prison abolition.
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.
