Abolitionism

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The term abolitionism (from lat. abolitio) refers to any system of ideas (and, possibly, a political programme and a social movement based thereon) that wants to do away with a repressive legal institution and the corresponding social practices. Therefore, the focus of abolitionism is always on

  1. a practice which is accepted by the legal order and by the dominant moral standards
  2. but which an active minority (i.e. the abolitionists) regards as an intolerable violation of higher principles of justice and humanity,
  3. thus trying to convince society at large and especially lawmakers that this practice and its legal foundation need to be abolished immediately and completely.

Abolitionism has won its greatest victory in the fight against slavery, but it has also been directed against capital punishment (death penalty), the prisons, abortion, and other objects of criticism.

Used as a generic term, abolitionism could be divided into immediatist abolitionism on the one and gradualist abolitionism on the other hand. Immediatists demand the immediate (and complete) abolition of the institution and practice in question, whereas gradualists demand the gradual step-by-step-reform into the direction of overcoming them.

Another usage would see "anti-slavery" as the generic term, and define "abolitionism" and "gradualism" as two competing strategies within this more generally defined ideology.

In this description, abolitionism is defined by the immediatism and radicalism of its demands, thus distinguishing itself from more reformist currents that ask not for the immediate abolition, but for a gradual phasing-out of the institution in question. In this usage of the term, the opposition to a repressive institution can be divided into abolitionists (who by definition are immediatists) on the one hand and gradualists on the other. Other usages of the term would see abolitionism as encompassing all opposition ot a repressive institution, and speak of immediatists and gradualists as varieties of abolitionism.

In this contribution, abolitionism is referred to as only the immediatist kind of opposition to a repressive institution. Those who are not calling for the immediate and complete abolition are referred to as gradualists, not as abolitionists.

The reason for this terminological choice is simple. It rests upon the moral (ethical) character of the argument against a repressive institution. If an institution is opposed because of its being unjust, then it makes no sense to call for its gradual elimination. An unjust practice - in theory - has no right to be prolonged. At least in theory, the necessity to abolish it right away and completely, is a necessary corollary of its being unjust. "There is no place for theoretical compromises that do not compromise the integrity of the theory itself. (...) Theoretical gradualism, warned Lloyd Garrison, is perpetuity in practice" (Lora 2006).

Slavery

The first abolitionist movement was also the most successful one ever. The fight to end slavery started out from the very fringes of society, but ended up not only with the eradication of both the slave trade and the legal institution that permitted the holding of slaves, but brought about such a radical change in public opinion that - today - it has become almost impossible to imagine how a society could ever have considered the existence of slavery as something natural and unquestionable. To grasp the significance of the abolition of slavery we have to remind ourselves that slavery had been a universal feature of ancient societies, and that slaves were considered the spoils of war. For politicians and philosophers in ancient Athens, the famous cradle of democracy, or in ancient Rome, for that matter, life without slaves had been beyond imagination.


Trans-atlantic slave trade

On 22 May 1787, twelve men, nine of whom were Quakers, gathered at a printing shop in London, England, to establish The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (or The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade). The most prominent members of this group were Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharpe.

It was not by coincidence that Quakers played a leading role in this Society. Already in 1688, Dutch and German Quakers had signed - at Germantown, Pennsylvania - the first anti-slavery statement; later, "English Quakers had begun to express their official disapproval of the slave trade since 1727. During the 1750s, a number of Quakers in Britain's American colonies also began to oppose slavery, calling on English Quakers to take action, and encourage their fellow citizens, including Quaker slave owners, to improve conditions for slaves, educate their slaves in Christianity, reading and writing, and gradually emancipate them. - An informal group of six Quakers pioneered the British abolitionist movement in 1783 when the London Society of Friends' yearly meeting presented its petition against the slave trade to parliament, signed by over 300 Quakers. They subsequently decided to form a small, committed, non-denominational group so as to gain greater Anglican and Parliamentary support. - The new, non-denominational committee formed in 1787 had nine Quaker members (who, as non-conformists, were debarred from standing for Parliament), and three Anglicans, whose support strengthened the committee's likelihood of influencing Parliament" [1].

"To expose the barbarity of the slave trade, Clarkson gathered evidence, such as the tools of torture used on slave ships, and interviewed thousands of slave ship sailors. He also developed powerful allies, such as M.P. William Wilberforce, who used his political influence to lobby for abolitionist causes in Parliament. Clarkson, Granville, Wilberforce, and other activists began spreading their message. They published protest pamphlets, raised funds, and organized public lectures and rallies."([2]).

Another friend of Clarkson's by the name of Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the highly renowned Wedgwood pottery company, produced what was to become one of the most influential anti-slavery symbols of all time - pottery medallions featuring a slave in chains with the simple but effective question: Am I not a man and a brother?. According to Clarkson, ladies wore these medaillions "in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At length the taste for wearing them became general, and thus fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom".

"Twenty years after the founding of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, their work was partially rewarded by the passage of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. This act prohibited Great Britain from participating in the transatlantic slave trade" ([3]).

Slavery in the USA

In the USA, it took (more than) 50 years of sometimes violent controversy - and a bloody civil war - to reach abolition. Some milestones were the years

  • 1820, when pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the U.S. Congress struck a deal concerning the extension of slavery known as the Missouri Compromise
  • 1829, when David Walker published his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, and when the discussion about abolition reached the Virginia legislature, while - in the Northern States - the idea was gaining ground of freeing the slaves and then resettling them back in Africa (a proposal that led to the founding of Liberia)
  • 1831, when Nat Turner's slave rebellion - (one of) the bloodiest of some 200 slave uprisings between 1776 and 1860, struck fear in the hearts of many white southerners (Turner and more than 70 enslaved and free blacks moved from farm to farm in Virginia, indiscriminately killing whites along the way and picking up additional slaves: By the time the militia put down the insurrection, more than 80 slaves had joined the rebellion, and 60 whites lay dead), and when William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator started its vehement attacks on slavery, both competing with and inspiring other media and messages like pamphlets and leaflets, anti-slavery poetry, slogans, essays, sermons, and songs against government sanctioned bondage
  • 1833, when the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society increased Southern anxiety that it was only a matter of time before Congress would begin to tamper with slavery; while the Society used peaceful means of lecturing and moral persuasion to attempt to change the hearts and minds of individuals, this anxiety led many anti-abolitionists to use violent tactics in countering the influence of abolitionists. Abolitionists also looked to future generations to carry on their work, creating a body of children’s literature to bring the harsh realities of slavery before a young audience. These materials were deemed so threatening in slave states that they were outlawed. All this created a bitter conflict that sometimes resulted in violence by both pro- and anti-abolitionists
  • 1837, when a pro-slavery mob killed the abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister, journalist and newspaper editor in Alton, Illinois, during their attack on his warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials - while, on the other hand, the abolitionist movement became practical in helping fugitive slaves reach freedom by means of a network of assistance and safe houses from the South to Canada known as the Underground Railroad
  • 1859, when the militant abolitionist John Brown, who had already been leading a small antislavery guerilla war in thze Kansas territory and in Missouri in 1855, led a raid on a federal arms depot at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the intent to start an armed slave revolt - his attempt being thwarted, however, by local farmers, militiamen, and Marines led by Robert E. Lee (within 36 hours of the attack, most of Brown's men had been killed or captured, and Brown himself was hanged later that year (although initially shocked by Brown's exploits, many Northerners began to speak favorably of the militant abolitionist. "He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. . . .," said Henry David Thoreau in an address to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts. "No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature. . . ."; the song "John Brown's body lies ..." became very popular with the troops of the Union during the Civil War, and is still known under the name "Battle Hymn of the Republic")
  • 1862, when the African Slave Trade Treaty Act between the U.S. and Britain suppressed the slave trade
  • 1863, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which declared slaves in Confederate-controlled areas to be freed, when state action freed most slaves in "border states", and when a separate law freed the slaves in Washington, D.C.
  • 1865, when the U.S. abolished slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on January 31st, affecting about 40,000 remaining slaves ("Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction")
  • 1866, when the so-called Indian territory, later known as the state of Oklahoma, abolished slavery
  • 1870, when the ratification of the 15th Amendment prohibited barring any citizen from the right to vote on the grounds of that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".

Open Questions

Does the End justify the Means?

There has been small-scale violence, there has been a bloody civil war, and there has been corruption in order to bring about abolition. It is an open question if all or some of this violence and corruption was a conditio sine qua non of abolition. If it was, at least to some extent, then the question arises in how far the (morally justified) end justified the (problematic) means that were necessary to bring it about.

  1. Violence by abolitionist individuals and small groups. Most abolitionists were decidedly non-violent; this was especially true of the Quakers as the main protagonists. On the other hand, violence did play a role both among pro- and anti-slavery activists. There were attempts to start large-scale slave rebellions (Nat Turner, John Brown), there were attacks on the life of abolitionists (Elijah Lovejoy), and many forms of aggression were part of the controversies surrounding slavery.
  2. Violence as military action in a civil war. Most of all, of course, the Civil War itself was the most violent episode in U.S. history - and without it, would abolition ever have come about? Is abolition worth it, can abolition justify all the suffering of a civil war? What if without violence abolition would not have been possible to achieve?
  3. The Lincoln Administration used a multitude of corruptive strategies to secure support of the 13th Amendment.

Were there negative Consequences of Liberation?

For some slaves, freedom may have meant an experience of loss more than of joy: loss of housing, ways and means of physical survival, social relations, and sense of purpose. How large was the number of freed slaves with this kind of experience? How serious was their situation? Which factors were responsible for this experience - and did the suddenness (i.e. lack of time for transition) have anything to do with it? If so, does the variable of time have to be reflected with relation to the immediatism that is so characteristic of abolitionism? This would raise questions like: (a) would a slower and more pragmatic emancipation have been possible/preferable to the immediatist approach in politics? Does theoretical abolitionism have a responsibility for the negative consequences of liberation? (b) has evidence of negative consequences of abolition been suppressed for ideological reasons? (c) could such a censure, if it existed, be justified in order not to tarnish the positive image of abolition as such?

What were the elements that enabled the abolition of slavery to move from moral fringes to the core of society?

Another open question refers to the pre-conditions that allowed the abolitionist discourse to gain hegemonial status within half a century.

What influence the claim that slavery was unjust - and what made this claim successful? Here we touch upon essentially contested concepts and fundamental conflicts that have been riveting the public of all ages and cultures. By definition, abolitionists turn against an established order by challenging the legitimacy of one of its legal institutions (e.g. slavery) which they, the abolitionists, claim to be utterly unjust and morally completely untenable. This radical reproach does not make them popular with the defenders of the status quo. More often than not they picture abolitionists as irresponsible and dangerous radicals at the lunatic fringes of society. Every now and then, though, history concedes victory to the abolitionist cause - such as in the case of slavery. In those cases, abolitionism gains high respect after victory, and to have overcome an inhumane institution suddenly turns into a source of pride for the whole nation.

Did the "innocence" of the slaves play a role in abolitionist narratives? How did worldly (human rights) and religious (salvery as a sin) arguments relate to each other? What was the role of popular books (Uncle Tom's Cabin) and symbols (Wedgwood medallions) in convincing the larger public of the abolitionist cause?

Where did the engagement and success of Quakers come from?

What was the specific potential of the Quaker religion to bring about such an involvement?

Prostitution

Fighting the Contagious Diseases Acts in Britain

From 1864 to 1869, the British Parliament passed so-called Contagious Diseases Acts (CDA) which were to provoke a movement with the aim of their abolition. The first of these acts was the result of a recommendation of a committee which had been established in 1862 to inquire into venereal disease in the armed forces. The idea of the CDA was to protect soldiers from infection by controlling prostitutes as a source of contagion.

As a matter of fact, by 1864 one out of three sick cases in the army had been caused by venereal disease, and admissions into hospitals for gonorrhoea and syphilis had reached 290.7 per 1,000 of total troop strength.

As military men were discouraged from marriage and homosexual behaviour was criminal, prostitution was considered a necessary evil.

Under these circumstances, it was deemed most effective to shield men from venereal disease by tightening health controls over prostitutes in certain ports and army towns.

The CDA did exactly that by allowing police officers to subject women to compulsory checks for veneral disease and to confine them to locked hospitals ("Lock Hospitals") until "cured". In the beginning, the time limit for lock hospitals was three months, but it was subsequently extended to one year, and while the original act could only be applied in a few selected ports and towns, there were no less than 18 "subjected districts" by 1869.

In 1869, though, public opinion was openly divided on the issue. On the one hand, there were those who thought the acts were useful and necessary, and who argued not only for maintaining them, but even for their extension. This very year, some activists founded the Association for the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

On the other hand, there was also the foundation of the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and - since this was initially restricting women from its meetings - by December of 1869, of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

An important cause for conflict had been the conditions in what was called a Lock hospital or Lock ward, i.e. an institution designed to treat those infected with a venereal disease. Once declared diseased a woman would be confined there (or in a workhouse infirmary) under stressful conditions.

At the basis, though, the repealists struck a chord with the public consensus on the issues surrounding prostitution and they highlighted the issue of double standards.

While the abolition of slavery was all about equality between the races, the fight against the discriminatory control of prostitutes was all about equality between the sexes. To punish women in order to protect men was evidently unjust.

As one prostitute said: It is men, only men, from the first to the last that we have to do with! To please a man I did wrong at first, then I was flung about from man to man. Men police lay hands on us. By men we are examined, handled, doctored. In the hospital it is a man again who makes prayer and reads the Bible for us. We are had up before magistrates who are men, and we never get out of the hands of men till we die!

The protagonist of the Ladies Association was Josephine Butler. Both groups actively campaigned against the acts and between 1870 and 1885, 17,365 petitions against the acts bearing 2,606,429 signatures were presented to the House of Commons, and during the same period, more than 900 meetings were held.

In 1886, the CDAs were repealed, and abolitionism had won yet another victory. This abolition had taken 22 years from the first contagious diseases act, and 17 from the foundation of the movement to abolition. In the long run, this was to lead to women organizing themselves and actively campaigning for their rights in all walks of life.

Open Questions

  • How did repeal affect prevention and cure of contagious diseases in Britain? Had the repression been completely unnecessary - and if so, could this serve as an argument for the abolition of other repressive legal practices like the criminal justice system?
  • Unequal treatment of the sexes can be ended by either extending the "female repression" to men or by extending the "male impunity" to women. In the case of prostitution, the repression of women had been abolished, but there is an open question relating to the possibility of solving the problem the other way around. In some Scandinavian countries, e.g., the idea is much more to extend repressive controls to men than to just lift repressive controls over women. Does this provide a just answer to the problem of equality?
  • Some may argue that real abolitionism would not content itself with lifting discriminatory sanctions against women, but would strive to abolish prostitution altogether. In how far could such a policy claim to be truly abolitionist?

Death Penalty

The first written legal texts already know the death penalty. In the 18th century B.C., the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon provided it for 25 types of crime. In the 14th century B.C., the Hittite Code knew the death penalty, as did the 7th century Draconian Code of Athens and, in the 5th century B.C., the Roman Law of the Twelve Tablets. Death sentences were carried out by such means as crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement.

There is a widespread belief that, over time, the death penalty has become more and more infrequent, and that one day soon it will be abolished all over the globe. The history of death penalty legislation shows quite a different picture, though. There have always been high and low tides of the death penalty, and there are many countries which - today - have it in their criminal codes, and make use of it, too, but which in earlier times already had abolished it (and, sometimes, had abolished it more than once).

Of a toal of 193 member states of the United Nations (2013), 97 countries have abolished capital punishment. 38 have not actively practised it for ten years or allow it only in exceptional circumstances such as wartime. 58 nations actively practise it. In Europe, the situation is special: Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment in all member states.

While Amnesty International considers most countries abolitionist today, there are some aspects which give less cause for optimism. For instance, the United Nations' non-binding resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions - adopted by the General Assembly in 2007, 2008 and 2010 - has had no effect whatsoever, and although the majority of nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the world's population live in countries where executions take place, such as the People's Republic of China, India, the United States of America and Indonesia, the four most-populous countries in the world, which continue to apply the death penalty (even if, like in India, Indonesia and in many US states, they do so with some restraint). Each of these four nations voted against the General Assembly resolutions...

Fighting the Death Penalty

Demands for the abolition of the death penalty had come from Cesare Beccaria in 1764, from Quaker John Bellers (1654-1725) - who also argued for a European State - and a number of thinkers linked either to religious ideologies or to the ideology of Enlightenment.

After World War II, European governments and bodies like the Council of Europe have been campaigning for abolition. The same holds true for the United Nations whose General Assembly suggests the abolition of the death penalty in repeated non-binding resolutions. On the non-governmental level, NGOs like Amnesty International acts globally to outlaw capital punishment.

The basic arguments against the death penalty (often used in combination) were (and are):

  • Denying the State's right to take the life of a citizen either on religious grounds (only God has this right) or on political grounds (no citizen would agree to a Social Contract that gives the State this right, since that would be against the vital interest of the citizen). The latter argument was used by Cesare Beccaria, but refuted by Immanuel Kant.
  • Denying the legitimacy of the death penalty by denying that (1) it serves justice, (2) it is socially necessary, (3) it is socially useful. Sometimes it is argued that it is counterproductive: killing a person is a bad example that might lower the value of life in society and incite homicides instead of preventing them (barbarization of society). In cases of erroneous verdicts the death penalty is the only one that does not permit redress: a prisoner can be set free and compensated, but an executed man cannot be revived.

Open Questions

  • Why does capital punishment persist in some places and not in others? There is a strong abolitionist current in the capital punishment debate in the United States of America. - From a non-partisan point of view, David Garland attributes the persistence of capital punishment to the relatively undeveloped nature of the American state and to the country’s low levels of social solidarity. Governments that are secure in their power and legitimacy are confident enough to banish the executioner. These tend to be countries that have professional criminal justice systems insulated from the public’s passion for revenge and that are able to maintain low levels of interpersonal violence. Not so surprisingly, then, the death penalty is most entrenched in the South, which has had the nation’s highest homicide rates and where the police have tended to be relatively under-funded and less professional.
  • Is there a long-term tendency towards abolition? Many death penalty states (from Russia to the state of Tennessee) had already abolished it in earlier days, and then reintroduced - and some states have gone through such a cycle more than once.
  • How promising are the ideological bases for abolition (Quakerism, Catholic Church, Liberalism, Humanism, Pragmatism ...)?

Prisons

There are three kind of initiatives based on a critical view of the prison, two of which can be seen as abolitionist in a wider sense of the term. They either want to

  • eliminate prisons as a form of punishment (abolitionists in the strict sense of the term) or
  • reduce the size of the prison system in order to - hopefully - phase it out in the long run (reductionists, gradualistis; abolitionists in the widest sense of the term) or
  • reform prisons to make them more humane and effective (prison reformers).

The (non-abolitionist) prison reform movement is linked with names such as John Howard and Elizabeth Fry in Britain, Thomas Mott Osborne in the United States, and Heinrich Balthasar Wagnitz in Germany. From a wider perspective, though, the whole history of the modern prison system has been one of continuous reform ideas and experiments, including the invention of the separate and the silent systems in Philadelphia, Pa., and Auburn, N.Y., in the late 18th and early 19th century, and their succession by the Irish System and many others that were all directed at making prisons work (better).

The (slightly abolitionist) movement for prison reduction is driven by a certain scepticism towards the possibility of making prisons as humane and effective as they were intended to be. Former prison director and later professor of criminology Andrew Rutherford argues for a radical reduction of the prison system in his 1987 book Prisons and the Process of Justice.

The movement to abolish prisons once and for all as a means of punishment is not very visible today, to say the least. To find convinced prison abolitionists one has to turn to the usual suspects like the Quaker community and similar religious groups. The groups during Foucault's times in France (GIP), in Britain (RAP), in Germany (KRAK), in Scandinavia (KROM, KRUM) and other countries have had their heydays. The small Anarchist Black Cross continues its frail existence. More continuity can be found with faith-based initiatives in North America. The Quakers, once the inventors of the modern prison, have been at the forefront of questioning the sense of prisons altogether and of searching for better alternatives. The International Conference on Prison Abolition (ICOPA) can be seen as a contemporary attempt to continue abolitionist traditions. Angela Davis attended the Toronto ICOPA conference and showed herself to be both positively and negatively surprised: she liked the fact that in these reactionary times the abolitionist idea was still being upheld, but she found that the - remarkable - fiath based initiatives showed a certain racial bias and narrowness, thus revealing a counterproductive isolation from relevant movements outside its circles.

The reasons for the weakness of the prison abolition movement are not difficult to detect:

  1. Prisons themselves originated as a rather benevolent alternative to the cruel corporal (and capital) punishments of earlier times, making it difficult to perceive them as inherently bad
  2. Prison inmates do not elicit the public sympathy reserved for innocent victims; they belong to a different moral category from victims of slavery
  3. In spite of their comparatively young age as an institution, prisons managed to be perceived by the wider public as a legitimate part of a quasi-natural social order.

Arguments

In a way, though, the arguments for abolition are much stronger than the present frailty of the movement suggests.

  • Sociological arguments for prison abolition include the outdatedness of incarceration from a social evolutionary perspective - a position maybe best spelled out by French philosophers Michel Foucault (1975) and Gilles Deleuze (1992). In Deleuze's opinion, prisons are anachronistic institutions just waiting to be abolished.
  • Pragmatic arguments criticize the prison system for being counterproductive, ineffective and costly
    • Incarceration is socially and economically crippling to the convicted and his community, while generating money for the community where the prison is located.
Each prisoner represents an economic asset that has been removed from that community and placed elsewhere. As an economic being, the person would spend money at or near his or her area of residence- typically, an inner city. Imprisonment displaces that economic activity: Instead of buying snacks in a local deli, the prisoner makes those purchases in a prison commissary. - While the removal of prisoner from his home community represents a loss of economic value there, it represents a gain for the community in which the prison is located. Each prisoner represents as much as $25,000 in income for the community in which the prison is located, not to mention the value of constructing the prison facility in the first place. This can be a massive transfer of value: a young male worth a few thousand dollars of support to children and local purchases is transformed into a $25,000 financial asset to a rural prison community. The economy of the rural community is artificially amplified, the local city economy is artificially deflated.
  • Moral arguments criticize the prison system as inherently unjust.
    • Racism. Blacks are 12.3 percent of the U.S. population (2001) but they comprise half of the roughly 2 million Amercans behind bars. On any given day, 30 percent of African-American males aged 20- 29 are under correctional supervision. Blacks constitute 13 percent of all drug users, but 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of persons convicted, and 74 percent of people sent to prison.
    • The growth of the prison population continues to be driven largely by incarceration for drug offenses. This hits the black community more than others. Since one quarter of all prison inmates are drug cases, the war on drugs can be seen as a fight to criminalize and control dangerous populations.
    • Disproportionality of using prisons for punishing lesser crimes (thieves, swindlers, shoplifters)
    • Double standards of letting rich people avoid prisons and incarcerating poor people and ethnic minorities who go to prison for lack of access to good defense lawyers. As the U.S. Supreme Court stated (in 1963): a poor person facing felony charges cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him. Even so, eight out of 10 accused of crimes in the U.S. are unable to afford a lawyer. The simple structure of the crimes of poor people makes them easy prey for prosecutors, whereas prosecutors tend to a hands-off-strategy when complex financial crimes threaten to overburden their expertise and manpower.
    • Violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (U.N. 1948) and which is prescribing life, liberty, equality and justice to all people without discrimination of any sort as an inalienable right. Imprisonment is seen by some as a form of violent behaviour which legitimises violence and cruelty, producing a "boomerang effect of dehumanisation" on the society which dehumanises itself and limits its potential for a peaceful future.
    • Prisons may be less effective at discouraging crimes and/or compensating victims than other forms of punishment. Degree and quality of access to justice depends on the financial resources of the accused. Prisons alienate people from their communities. In the U.S., people of color and from the lower class are much more likely to be imprisoned than people of European descent or people who are wealthy. People who are put in prison for what are arguably crimes motivated by need, such as some minor theft (food, etc.) or prostitution, find it much harder to obtain legal employment once convicted of a crime. Arguably, this difficulty makes it more likely they will find themselves back in the prison system, having had few other options or resources available to support themselves and/or their families. Many prison abolitionists argue that we should "legalize survival" and provide help to those who need it instead of making it even harder to find work and perpetuating the non-violent crimes. .- Prisons are not proven to make people less violent. In fact, there is evidence that they may instead promote violence in individuals by surrounding them with other violent criminals, which can lead to predictable negative/violent results. - Drug-related offenders are being ushered in and out of the prison system like a revolving door. Rather than educate, and rehabilitate the offender to a clean path of sobriety and increased stature, the state ignores them.
    • Prisons are used as a "default asylum" for many individuals with mental illness. Somewhere between 30 to 40% of mentally ill individuals in jail and in prison have had no criminal charges placed. One question that is often asked by some prison abolitionists is: "why do governmental units choose to spend billions of dollars a year to concentrate people with serious illnesses in a system designed to punish intentional lawbreaking, when doing so matches neither the putative purposes of that system nor most effectively addresses the issues posed by that population?" This question is often one of the major pieces of evidence that prison abolitionist claim highlights the depravity of the penal system. Many of these prison abolitionists often state that mentally ill offenders, violent and non-violent, should be treated in mental hospitals not prisons. By keeping the mentally ill in prisons they claim that rehabilitation cannot occur because prisons are not the correct environment to deal with deep seated psychological problems and facilitate rehabilitative practices. Individuals with mental illnesses that have led them to commit any crime have a much higher chance of committing suicide while in prison because of the lack of proper medical attention. The increased risk of suicide is said to be because there is much stigma around mental illness and lack of adequate treatments within hospitals. The whole point of the penal system is to rehabilitate and reform individuals who have willingly transgressed on the law. According to many prison abolitionists however, when mentally ill persons, often for reasons outside of their cognitive control, commit illegal acts prisons are not the best place for them to receive the help necessary for their rehabilitation. For many prison abolitionists, if for no other reason than the fact that mentally ill individuals will not be receiving the same potential for rehabilitation as the non-mentally ill prison population, prisons are considered to be unjust and therefore violate their Sixth Amendment and Fifth Amendment Rights, in the U.S., and their chance to rehabilitate and function outside of the prison. By violating individual’s rights to rehabilitation prison abolitionist see no reason for prisons to exist and offers just one more reason people with the movement demand for the abolition of prisons. In America, by violating an individual's rights as a citizen prison abolitionist see no reason for prisons to exist and, again, offers another reason people within the movement demand for the abolition of prisons.
    • But: opponents of the abolition argue that none of the above arguments addresses the protection of non-criminal population from the effects of crime, and from particularly violent criminals.

Strategies

  • Substituting incarceration with supervised release, probation, restitution to victims, or community work; decreasing terms of imprisonment by abolishing mandatory minimum sentencing; decreasing ethnic disparity in prison populations; foster crime prevention rather than punishment; abolition of specific programs which increase prison population, such as the prohibition of drugs (e.g. War on Drugs), gun control, prohibition of sex work, and alcohol restrictions; fighting individual cases of wrongful conviction.
  • The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime published a series of handbooks on criminal justice. Among them is Alternatives to Imprisonment which identifies how the overuse of imprisonment impacts fundamental human rights, especially those convicted for lesser crimes.
  • In place of prisons, some abolitionists propose community-controlled courts, councils, or assemblies to control the problem of social crime. A large part of the problem, according to some, is the way the judicial system deals with prisoners, people and capital. They argue that there would be fewer prisoners if society treated people more fairly, regardless of gender, color, ethnic background, sexual orientation, education, etc.

Open Questions

  • What is to be abolished? All kinds of confinement against a person's will - or only confinement as a form of officially proclaimed legal punishment? Most people would agree that some people have to be kept locked up for reasons of public safety (serial killers). They would probably stay in some kind of confinement even after the abolition of prison as a punishment, i.e. as a punitive reaction to crime, i.e. as a legal reaction to a violation of criminal law that consists of the intentional infliction of suffering to make someone "pay" for his crime. Confinement for medical reasons or reasons of public security would remain untouched by this abolition.
  • On the other hand it is an empirical question if public security can be guaranteed as well as with prisons or even better by ambulatory measures.
  • What are the comparative merits of a purely negative reform strategy (Mathiesen, Frankfurter Schule, ...) and one that proposes alternatives to imprisonment (Thomas Bianchi)?

Criminal Law and the Criminal Justice System

Arguments

The moral reasoning to abolish the criminal justice system altogether rests on the fact that this system contributes to the amount of pain in the world instead of limiting or reducing it.

  • Christie: Limits to Pain
  • Poor quality of Conflict Resolution (wenn die Konflikte den Leuten gehören, nicht dem Staat, ist das relevant)
  • Questioning the State's Competency and Right to Punish
  • Catascopic and anascopic views
  • The religious analogy of conditional programming (commandments)
  • Problematic Situations to be solved by those concerned
  • Restorative Justice
  • Initiatives and individual publications
  • To do away with reifications of everyday thinking
  • To do away with abstract general norms and the juridical syllogism. An example of how "law" can work in a completely different manner can be found in classical Athen's legal system:
Maximale Transparenz, permanente Bürgerbeteiligung und direkte Demokratie waren die Prinzipien dieser Rechgtskultur, wie Werner Rieß (Hamburg) während eines Kolloquiums zur athenischen Rechtsgeschic hte an der Universität Hamburg ausführte. Einen Juristenstand gab es in Athen so wenig wie einen Fachjargon und Expertenzirkel. Das Recht war nach Überzeugung der Athener das Fundament der Demokratie und deshalb eine durch und durch öffentliche Sache, die nicht zur Angelegenheit von Spezialisten werden durfte. Stattdessen wurden regelmäßig Tausende von Bürgern ausgelost, um in einer Vielzahl von Richterkollegien per Mehrheitsentscheid Recht zu sprechen. - Wie die Verfahren abzulaufen hatten, war penibel geregelt. Ein ausgefeiltes und kompliziertes Prozessrecht sollte vieles kompensieren, was aus heutiger Sicht als gravierender Mangel erscheint. Tatbestände und Rechtsnormen waren oft höcsht vage definiert, Indizien, Zeugenbegragungen und Beweise spielten kaum eine Rolle. Das Lag nicht in erster Linie an technischer Rückständigkeit oder mangelndem Problembewusstsein. Vielmehr vertrauten die Athener fest darauf, dasss die Vernunft der demokratisch sich herausbildenden Mehrheit die gerechtesten Urteile gebiert. Mochten sich die diskutierenden und abstimmenden Bürger auch hin und wieder irren, unter dem Strich, so die allgemeine Überzeugung, lag die Rechtsfindung bei ihnen in den besten Händen. Im Vormärz entdeckten liberale Juristen und Philologen hier eine Tradition, an die sie anknüpfen konnten: Im athenischen Rechts ahen sie den freiheitlichen Gegenentwurf zur obrigkeitlichen Geheimjustiz ihrer Zeit (Krischke 2013).

As a matter of fact, the ICOPA was renamed to encompass an even larger spectrum of demands. Instead of making halt at the demand to abolish prisons, the organization now envisaged to abolish the whole of the criminal justice system, including criminal law and criminal trials. One of the proponents of this enlargement of perspective was Louk Hulsman. Together with Nils Christie and Thomas Mathiesen from Norway, Hulsman is being seen as one of the most influential contemporary abolitionists.

Controversies

Controversies surrounding the abolitionist agenda today center on the question of idealism, utopianism, and on the question of the rule of law. Some emancipatory movements are investing their hopes into participatory power In the state and legal apparatus, and thus aim at enshrining their beliefs and values in the criminal law instead of abolishing the penal codes. This weakened the abolitionist movement, but the last word has not been spoken on this matter.

Abortion

Literature

  • Bergalli, Roberto, and Inaki Rivera Beiras, cords. (2012) Louk Hulsman: ¿Qué queda de los abolicionismos? Barcelona: Anthropos.
  • Braithwaite, John (2002) Restorative Justice and Responsive Regulation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Davis, Angela ...
  • Deleuze, Gilles (1992) Postscript on the Societies of Control, in: October, Vol. 59. (Winter, 1992), pp. 3-7. (German: 1990 Das elektronische Halsband; French orig.: L'Autre Journal, 1, Mai 1990; [4].
  • Foucault, Michel (1975) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House.
  • Garland, David (2010) Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition. Belknap Press
  • Hochschild, Adam (2005) Bury the Chains. The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery. New York: Houghton Mifflin 2005.
  • Hulsman, Louk H.C. (1986) Critical criminology and the concept of crime. Contemporary Crises 10: 63-79.
  • Hulsman, Louk, and Jacqueline Bernat de Celis (1982) Peines perdues. Paris: Le Centurion.
  • Mathiesen, Thomas (1974) The Politics of Abolition. London.
  • Mauz, Gerhard (1975) Das Spiel von Schuld und Sühne. Die Zukunft der Strafjustiz. Düsseldorf, Köln.
  • Sayward, Amy L. and Margaret Vandiver (2010) Tennessee's New Abolitionists: The Fight to End the Death Penalty in the Volunteer State. Univ of Tennessee Press.
  • Scheerer, Sebastian (1991) "Abolitionismus". In: R. Sieverts, H.J. Schneider, Hg., Handwörterbuch der Kriminologie. In völlig neu bearb. zweiter Auflage, Band 5, Berlin: de Gruyter: 289-301.
  • Scheerer, Sebastian (1984) Die abolitionistische Perspektive. Kriminologisches Journal 90-111 [5].

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