Abolitionism-s

Abolitionism-s is the title of the following work in progress by Sebastian Scheerer (20 July 2014)

Two hundred years ago, three-quarters of the world's population were in bondage of one kind or another. Eighty thousand slaves were trafficked every year from Africa to the New World. Ship owners, slave traders, sugar exporters, chocolate makers and plantation owners were earning fortunes. Only one MP, William Wilberforce, was active in the abolitionists' cause. Yet with organisation, enthusiasm and imaginative campaigning, the abolitionists eventually forced parliament to hear the cries of the suffering slaves and bend to the will of the British people. "It was the first time in history," writes Hochschild, "that a large number of people became outraged, and stayed outraged for many years over someone else's rights."

Robin White (2005) on Adam Hochschild’s “Bury the Chains”

A) the abolition of prisons will come, as sure and certain as the day follows the night, and as certain as the abolition of slavery followed at a Godgiven time.

B) while awaiting the total abolition, progressive criminologists should spend all their time not in struggle against the stupidities of the prison system but in describing and and working out effectfull alternatives of crime control.

Herman Thomas Bianchi (2008)

For most people, abolitionism is a thing of the past. For others it is utopian. It may be both, and more. What I mean is that abolitionism can also be considered an important way of moral reflection in a time of re-barbarization.

Most people think of slavery and of Abraham Lincoln when they hear the words abolition, abolitionist, or abolitionism. Few are aware of the fact that there have been – and are – also other abolitionist movements. Feminists might know Josephine Butler’s campaign for the rights of prostitutes in the second half of the 19th century, and some white-haired ex-hippies might vaguely remember the timid first signs of a movement to abolish prisons a century later. Most people would be surprised, though, to hear that there has even been talk of abolishing criminal laws, criminal courts, and criminal punishments altogether. One thing that must be done, therefore, is to raise our consciousness of things past. Another thing is to ask the right questions – otherwise the best factual knowledge will be to no avail. This paper wants to spark interest in both the beauty of abolitionist ideals and the reasons for their phases of success and failure. It is grounded on the belief that a better society is possible, but that there is, unfortunately, no such thing as a pre-determined course of history that leads to a society without executions, prisons, and punishments. It is possible to reach such a state, but it is by no means necessary in the sense of Hegelian or Marxist versions of historicism. Rather, it is one of a million options – and quite a remote one – of how humankind will shape its own future. With the mainstream of developments drifting into the opposite direction, that of re-barbarization amidst (and interrelated with) a breathtaking progress in science and tech-nology, the abolitionist stance is becoming once more what it used to be in its very beginning: an individual moral choice calling for courage, outspokenness, sacrifice, and sublimated re-wards. A micro-sociological view will reveal that there is more than just one abolitionism. There are abolitionism-s. Though partly connected by goals and concerns, they are diverse and some-times contradictory, and they highlight central problems of social thought and action not only with relation to the past, but also in view of the present and the future. Abolitionism is the ensemble of a plurality of theoretical, empirical and political efforts to abolish (i.e. to get rid of) legalized institutions of coercion or repression like e.g. slavery, the legal discrimination of prostitutes, the legal institution of the death penalty, the prison, or the criminal justice system. Penal abolitionism is an important part of abolitionism. According to Louk Hulsman, it con-sists of two branches, the practical or political abolitionism on one hand, and academic aboli-tionism on the other. The former designates the efforts of part of civil society (reformers, ac-tivists, social movements, moral crusaders) to abolish penal institutions such as the death pen-alty and the prisons, i.e. to put an end to incarceration as a form of accepted punishment in society. Some of these reformers even want to abolish criminal courts and want to substitute the criminal justice system by procedures of restorative or transformative justice on a com-munity basis. In these cases penal abolitionism means to challenge the state’s right to have trials and mete out punishments altogether. Secondly, there is a corresponding intellectual endeavour, i.e. a set of teachings and theories which are sceptical towards the usual self-justifications of the penal law and the so-called criminal justice system. With relation to the hegemonic belief systems governing the fields of law, criminology, and also public opinion – i.e. with relation to the conviction that both the penal law and prisons are supposedly neces-sary – abolitionists are “heretics” or “infidels”. Such a position vis-à-vis the common sense of their times was also characteristic of the early abolitionists who had been regarded as com-pletely out of their minds by the vast majority of their contemporaries. This paper aims at a history of abolitionist thoughts and movements in a nutshell. It wants to touch on questions like ends and means, internal and external perspectives, and the definition of success and failure. Finally, it may astonish to find out that abolitionism of whatever kind, which is always char-acterized by the effort to reduce the suffering in the world, does not enjoy the same positive public attitudes given to other benefactors of humanity, e.g. doctors and nurses. The reason for this is, of course, that the latter reduce suffering within the given social order, while the former strive for structural changes by attacking it. That creates fear, anger, and aggression. A case in point is the story of Elijah P. Lovejoy and his death in 1837. If you engage in aboli-tionist activities, and if you do it really well, you will have enemies, and sooner or later you will find yourself in the firing line. Once you have a convincing moral claim, it is hard to stop in the middle. The word “to abolish” means “to do away with wholly, completely”. That im-plies “total” abolition, be it of the death penalty, be it of slavery, be it of the prison. If you think that an institution (like slavery) is utterly unjust, then it would also lack any logic to argue for only a partial reform. Can one limit the fight against slavery to the aim of liberating only children or women, and not men? Can one limit the fight to ending slavery in Europe, but not in Asia or the Americas? The same holds true for all abolitionist movements, including that against prisons. In that sense abolitionists cannot be pragmatists, and that is why they get in trouble. That was true then, it is true now, and it will be true in the future. In that sense, it is simply not true that abolitionism is a thing of the past. There are still many important lessons to be learned.

Back to the Roots: Liberation as domination

Semantic and conceptual sources of abolitionism can be found in the institution of abolitio (from abolire, aboleō abolēs, abolet) in Roman Law. The abolitio freed accused people before the verdict, it simply stopped the prosecution. In this sense, it was a liberating institution. There were three three types of abolitions: ex lege, privata, publica. They were rather im-portant legal institutions, especially the abolitio publica. They had the function of reducing the burden of unresolved cases in the overstrained criminal justice system of Ancient Rome, and the second function of making people thankful to the magnanimity of the Emperor, i.e. the abolitiones publicae were quite an effective means of legitimizing the respective rulers. This double function continued after the fall of the Roman Empire. There was a continuation of the so called right of abolition until the end of the era of absolute monarchies in Europe (1648-1789). An example was the abolition granted to the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini by pope Paul III (in 1534). In the Ancien Régime, the right of abolition was incorporated in the royal lettres de justice; lettres de cachet and lettres d’abolition. Sealed royal letters contained orders that could not be subjected to any legal process, i.e. they were absolute and finite decisions. They were instruments for all kinds of interests. In 1680, e.g., the Comédie Française was founded by an order contained in a lettre de cachet. Today, they are best known for their politically repressive function. One of the reasons for this was the campaign against the lettres de cachet started by French philosopher and writer Voltaire. These letters became a prominent symbol of the abuses of the monarchy, and as such were suppressed during the French Revolution. This obscures the fact that their primary function was social, not political, and that the kings themselves tried to curtail their inflationary use. From 1741 to 1775, there were almost 20 000 such letters. In Brittany, the yearly average went from 10 between 1735 and 1750 to 20 to 40 between 1778 and 1789. Political questions were only touched upon by some 5% of all such letters. The so called lettres d‘abolition freed accused persons from all legal proceedings, but in spite of this liberating character of theirs they attracted the same kind of dislike as the other lettres de cachet. Ordonnance criminelle 1670 (title 16, Des lettres d'abolition, rémission, pardon, pour ester à droit, rappel de ban ou de galères, commutation de peine, réhabilitation et ré-vision de procès).: Lettres d'abolition sont celles que le roi remet à l'auteur d'un crime non rémissible et par lesquelles le roi abolit la peine dont l'auteur du crime est passible. L'article 4 du titre 16 dispose qu'il ne sera pas accordé de lettre d'abolition en cas de duel, d'assassinat, de rapt avec violence ou encore d'excès contre les magistrats ou auxiliaires de justice, ni aux principaux coupables, ni à ceux qui les auraient aidés.

The Greatest Revolution Ever?

Until 1789, abolition was a powerful symbol of monarchical arbitrariness – of despotism. The king just claimed the privilege of doing whatever he pleased to do, and nobody could contra-dict or control such manifesteations of the sovereign will. In 1789, all this was to change. When, on the 17th of June, 1789, the French States-General declared themselves the National Assembly, they claimed sovereignty for them as incorpora-tion of the nation. Sovereignty passed from being royal of the type The State am I to national of the type We Are the Nation. Liberation from the repressive powers of the State passed from being individual luck and royal capriciousness to a right of the people to be freed of unnecessary infringements of their liberties. One of the first actions of the new National Assembly was the abolition of the lettres de cachet and the lettres d abolition. Notabene, Napoleon reactivated them in 1801 under the name of prison d’état. The question was and is, of course, which kinds of domination are despotic, and which are not. Montesquieu, in 1721, already gave an answer that was hard to chew, saying that all laws, and all acts of government, that were not justified by sheer necessity, were despotic. From this, Beccaria had derived his programme to abolish the death penalty and torture altogether. Some monarchs were convinced he was right, at his time, and others werde not. The conflict is not over today yet. Dick Cheney could not be convinced until this very day. From the 18th century onwards, there have been two concurrent ideologies that must be under-stood if we want to understand abolitionisms of any kind, one humanist, the other religiously motivated (Quaker).

Abolishing the Slave Trade

The abolition of slavery can be seen as the greates revolution ever in the course of history. It broke with concepts as old as mankind itself by manifesting the will to stress equality of all humans, regardless of race, colour, and later sex and sexual orientations. It is worth asking some questions concerning how and why it came about, who were the pro-tagonists, the antagonists, and in how far an outside observer would have attributed the suc-cess of anti slavery activities to economic necessity.

1765 After the tragic Sally slave ship voyage, Moses Brown, one of four funding Rhode Island brothers, turns abolitionist and converts to Quakerism
1787 Society for Effecting the Abolition of Slavery Th Clarkson, Gr Sharp et al. Small group, forceful ideology
1807 Slave Trade Act Abolition of slave trade in British Empire Pressing others to abolish their slave trades
Slavery remains legal in B Empire until Slavery Abolition Act 1833. As part of the deal, parliament agreed to pay £20m in compensation, not to slaves but to the slave owners. - US, DK, S, NL consent, F follows 1848, BR 1852 after robust threats; ES, P high compensations make them end the trade, too.

The End of Slavery

In spite of the end of the transatlantic slave trade, people who advocated the abolition o slav-ery proper remained at the margins of society until the U.S. Civil War (1861-65). In 1831, the biggest ever slave revolt in the history oft he United States was led by Nat Turner. He and a few dozen activists started killing white people following what they thought were divine or-ders. The revolt was crushed, Turner hanged and skinned, and his fellows also executed. Anti-slave legislation was toughened, and the living conditions of slaves worsened. Moral time, on the other hand, was going into the other direction. In Britain, the Slavery Abolition Act went into force in 1834 and transmitted the sense that keeping slavery alive would soon be consid-ered anachronistic. The reactionary policy in the South of the U.S. did not make much sense anymore anywhere else. The killing of Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837 and the passing of the Fugi-tive Slave Act in 1850 infuriated liberals and made Harriet Beecher-Stowe write Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Radical Abolitionist John Brown tried to start a civil war to free the slaves with his raid on an armory at Harper’s Ferry – and while, of course, he was defeated, tried and executed in 1859, his memory served to motivate Northerners ever more to end slavery as soon as possible. With the election of Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. presidency (1860), the civil war (1861), the emancipation declaration (1862), the Dutch turn away from slavery in 1863, and the passing of the 13th amendment in 1865, things changed. After Spain abolished slavery on Cuba (1880) and Brazil proclaimed abolition in 1888, the page was turned. Table 2: Abolition of Slavery Proper 1824 Elizabeth Heyrick publishes "Immediate Not Gradual Abolition". 1831 Nat Turner’s Revolt The ambivalence of progressive violence 1837 Lynching of Elijah Lovejoy Blood of martyrs – seeds of the movement 1850 Fugitive Slave Act 1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1859 John Brown Abolitionist John Brown attempts armed slave revolt by seizing a US arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., but is defeated by U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. Harriet Tubman & Douglass do not participate (ill-ness, evaluation) Rationality of irrationali-ty 1862 Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation Preliminary and tactical 1865 13th Amendment of US Constitution Ending slavery in the USA End justifies means 1888 Lei Aurea/Golden Law Brazil Last slavery country formally abolishes it

Discussion

The utilitarian question: did the Turner Revolt retard or hasten abolition?

"..there are 'rebellions' which are not rebellions, but great revolutions, and thre are 'rebels' who, however absolutely their immediate purpose may have failed, and however unjustly contemporary historey may have recoreded their actions, shall yet be known to posterity as patriots pure and lofty, whose motives and deeds shall evokte the admiration of all succeeding times" (Nelson Page, cited by Aptheker 1966: 110).

The moral vs. the economic view of how and why abolition came about
The ideological conflict: equality vs. diversity (separate, but equal)
Diversity and verticality (John C. Calhoun, 1782-1850): slavery as „a good – a great good“; the destructive potential of liberty and equality ideals; liberty was not a universal right but should be 'reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving.' Signs of this today? Explaining political rhetoric as bridging the gap.
The greates revolution in human history?
Gradualism vs. Abolitionism: relative merits (Donald Black; moral time; were they right after all? Less human suffering with gradualism than with abolitionism? Another contradiction: abolitionist compression of moral time is needed to provide the motivational force for estab-lishing the visible illegitimacy of slavery, but the same fervor produces strife and bloodshed and wounds that do not heal). If gradualism is distinct from abolitionism, what does that say about the right of today’s critics of the prison system to call themselves (or be called) abolitionists?
The role of morality. Slavery was considered cruel and inhuman. The arguments were moral in nature, not consequentialist or utilitarian, even though such considera-tions did play a supportive role. The same holds true for the abolitionist campaigns against the death penalty. This type of punishment is considered the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrad-ing punishment by organizations such as Amnesty International. Abolitionism is inextricably linked to thinking the Absolute. Therefore, the term abolition is found most frequently togeth-er with adjectives such as radical, total, unconditional, complete, instant, immediate, and the like.

Reading

Hochschild, Adam (2005) Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. Hough-ton-Mifflin

Prostitution

History

The abolition of slavery was still a topic of the day, when Josephine Butler (1828-1906) helped create the very same moral outrage and collective action to abolish a different kind of legal oppression. As an upper-class progressive Christian feminist she was especially con-cerned with the welfare of prostitutes, leading a long campaign for the repeal of the Conta-gious Diseases Acts from 1869 to 1886. These acts had been introduced (1864, 1866, 1869) to control the spread of venereal diseases among the military personnel, giving magistrates the power to order genital examinations of prostitutes for symptoms of VD, and to detain infected women in a closed institution (lock hospital) for up to three months; to refuse the examination meant imprisonment. Police had the power over women: it was sufficient for a police officer to accuse a woman of prostitution to make magistrates order an examination. An accusation was enough to make women lose their livelihoods. Escalation: In 1869, the "Association for the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts" was formed to campaign to extend their operation beyond specified ports and garrison towns, leading to vehement opposition from Christians, feminists and supporters of civil liberty and to the setting up of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Later, male supporters were also allowed, and despite vilification and occasional physical assaults on Mrs. Butler, and the Acts were repealed in 1886.

Discussion

What is the real abolition: that of repressive laws against prostitutes or that of prostitution as such? Those who advocate the abolition of prostitution speak of “white slavery”. They find it mis-guided to speak of abolitionism and to attack laws regulating prostitution. Rather, they want to reserve the term to efforts against prostitution proper. Who is right? And why?

Reading

Miriam, Kathy (2005) Stopping the Traffic in Women: Power, Agency and Abolition in Feminist Debates over Sex-Trafficking. Journal of Social Philosophy. Volume 36, 1, 1–17
Moore, Roderick (1993) Josephine Butler (1828-1906). Feminist, Christian, and Libertarian. London: Libertarian Alliance

Death Penalty

History

Until the mid-18th century a very wide range of offenses, including even common theft, were punishable by death (Black Act, 1723). Evidently, for political reasons, the punishment was not always enforced. Later in the 18th century, though, a marked shift transformed European values; humanitarianism and the ideal of moral progress of the human race began a movement to limit the scope of capital punishment. 1721 Montesquieu 1764 Dei delitti e delle pene, by Cesare Beccaria 1794 Pennsylvania restricts the death penalty to first-degree murder 1846 Michigan abolishes capital punishment for all murders and other common crimes 1863 Venezuela is first country to abolish capital punishment for all crimes, including serious offenses against the state (e.g., treason and military offenses in time of war). 1867 Portugal is first European country to abolish the death penalty 1899 There are 3 countries with no death penalty: Costa Rica, San Marino, Venezuela. 1948 There are 8 countries with no death penalty. Also: Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN) 1978 There are 19 countries with no death penalty 2014 Two thirds of all countries have abolished the death penalty. Two thirds of mankind live in countries with death penalty. 140 countries do not apply the death penalty. 58 countries are retentionist.

Protagonists, Milestones, and Setbacks

U.S.A.: National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP). Founded in 1976. More than 100 affiliate organizations. Today, 18 States of the USA are death penalty-free. Amnesty International (2014): 98 countries have abolished the death penalty completely. 7 retain it for exceptional cases (war); 35 have abolished it in praxi, but not de lege. Amnesty International believes: the trend towards abolition is irreversible. Since the beginning of the 1990s, more than 50 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. In 2012, Latvia joined this group. Once abolished, the death penalty is only rarely being reintroduced. There are an estimated 10 000 death sentences per year. Most of them in China. The rest of them – some 2000 – are being handed out in some 57 countries. Executions: ca. 750 (plus < 10 000 in China). Iran (< 100), Iraq (ca. 100), Saudi-Arabia and the USA (< 100). Lately, Egypt has joined the list and ranks second in the world after China. Death Row: any day there are at least 23.000 convicts waiting for execution. Innocents: in the USA, there have been 144 death row inmates released because of proof of innocence or serious doubts about their guilt. 62 out of these 144 cases had been revealed since the year 2000. July 27, 2007: four men served decades of prison time for a murder in 1965 they had not committed. The FBI knew of the false accusation, but did not reveal their knowledge until opening of archives in 2001. In 2007, the two surviving inmates and the families of the de-ceased inmates received 101.7 million USD compensation. June 2014: NYC makes a deal with 5 men (hispanics, black) and pays 40 million USD com-pensation for wrongful imprisonment in 1989. Then between 14 and 16, they had been con-victed of a rape of upper-class Central Park jogger Trisha Meili. In 2002, the real offender had been found. Movie: The Central Park Five. The case had been the reason for Donald Trump to publicly call for the reintroduction of the death penalty in the State of New York: A full-page advertisements placed in four New York newspapers today by Donald J. Trump calling for reinstatement of the death penalty grew out of the real-estate developer's deep-seated feeling that what's happening in society today has to be stopped, Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview Saturday. The $85,000 worth of ads, in The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post and New York Newsday, refer to the attack by a gang of youths on a woman jogger and others in Central Park on April 19. The 600-word appeal, signed Donald J. Trump, is titled Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police! The advertisement appears today on page A13 of The Times. In the advertisement, Mr. Trump says that Mayor Edward I. Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I want to hate these muggers and murderers, Mr. Trump wrote. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.

Reading

Evans, Richard (1996) Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987. Oxford University Press
Garland, David (2010) Peculiar Institution. America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition. OUP/Harvard Uni-versity Press

Prisons

Quakers

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers, 1981):

Friends, partly through their own experiences in the prisons of the seventeenth century, became concerned about the treatment of the accused or convicted. Friends witnessed to their concern for the Divine Spirit in humans by seeing prisons as an alternative to corporal or capital punishment. Subsequently, they worked for reform of these prisons.

Today, Friends are becoming aware that prisons are a destructive and expensive failure as a response to crime. We are, therefore, turning our efforts to reform prisons to efforts to replace them with non-punitive, life-affirming and reconciling responses.

The prison system is both a cause and a result of violence and social injustice. Throughout history, the majority of prisoners have been the powerless and the oppressed. We are increasingly clear that the imprisonment of human beings, like their enslavement, is inherently immoral and is as destructive to the cagers as the caged.

The challenge before us is to use alternatives based on economic and social justice and on the fulfillment of human needs. Some alternatives to prisons have already been developed and more are needed to bring about reconciliation and healing within the community. Friends need to seek out, develop and support such programs.

At the same time, we need to foster awareness in ourselves and others of the roots of crime and violence in society to ensure that our lives do not unintentionally reinforce these evils. Prison abolition is both a process and a long-term goal. In the interim, there is a great need for friends to reach out to and to support all those affected: guards, prisoners, victims and families.

We recognize a need for restraint of those few who are exhibiting dangerous behaviour. The kind of restraint used and the help offered during this time must reflect our concern for that of God in every person.”

Gradualism

No criminal policy should counteract materially or ideologically the goal of reducing and finally abolishing the prison system.

Gradualists favour a slow and steady reduction of the prison system. They advocate

ending overcriminalization by limiting prison sentences to serious crime
correcting the sentencing system by substituting, for incarceration, supervised release, probation, restitution to victims, and/or community work; decreasing terms of imprisonment by abolishing mandatory minimum sentencing; decreasing ethnic disparity in prison populations; fighting wrongful convictions; fighting class, race, gender bias in the judicial system
community-controlled courts, councils, or assemblies to control the problem of social crime (there would be fewer prisoners if society treated people more fairly)

Organizations: GIP (Michel Foucault); ICOPA, KROM, KRIM, KRAK and Thomas Mathiesen (negative reforms; unfinished; an alternative to prisons is any contradiction to the prison system's means and ends. Shifting the focus from the offender to the victim, e.g.).

Most arguments against prisons are not based on moral principle, but could be understood as arguments in favor of reforming the prison and making it more just. Thomas Mathiesen: 8 arguments for a prison building moratorium (UN congress Milano, 1985):

special prevention does not work and violates human rights
General prevention does not work
Overcrowding should be prevented by other means than building more prisons
New construction is irreversible
Prisons have an expansionist, self-maintaining and self-expanding character
Prisons are humiliating
Prisons reveal how a society thinks about human beings and conflict resolution
Prisons are a waste of money.

The injustice of the prison system:

Lack of proper legal representation: Eighty percent of people accused of crimes [in the United States] are unable to afford a lawyer to defend them." The US Supreme Court held in 1963 that a poor person facing felony charges "cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him."
War on drugs conceals racial tension. Appr. one quarter of people in U.S. prisons or jails have been convicted of a drug offense. On any given day, 30 percent of African-American males aged 20- 29 are under correctional supervision. They 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.

Abolitionism

The Massachusetts Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition says: the prison system is in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which is prescribing life, liberty, equality and justice to all people without discrimination of any sort as an inalienable right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has also abolished all forms of slavery and genocide, including torture, repression and oppression that prisons thrive upon.
Imprisonment is seen by some as violent behaviour producing a "boomerang effect of dehumanisation" on the society. Furthermore, prisons are used as a "default asylum" for many individuals with mental illness: "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?" (Amanda Pustlinik)

Dutch criminologist Herman Thomas Bianchi is no friend of prisons, either:

They remind him of concentration camps. And he is prepared to sketch his ideas. Holland contains ten thousand incarcerated persons. Six hundred of them present an acute danger. They would fit in one pris-on. He lived among Mohawks in an American reservation a couple of times. They are unfamiliar with criminal law. Jesus said a wrongdoer should be invited seventy times seven times to make up. According to Indian practise, you should ask ten times. But our criminal law does not ask once. Bianchi believes so-ciety should try to induce each criminal to show remorse and to make up. Prison could serve as a last re-sort for those who are absolutely unwilling or unable to show remorse. This principle of reconciliation, restorative justice, is gaining more proponents worldwide. Nor has Heinz Steinert been friend of prisons (in: Feest & Paul 2008): Abolitionism needs to be expanded to questions of „pain infliction“, discrimination, in general: damage done by the state. Can imprisonment be reconciled with human rights? Since in Europe imprisonment and punishment is concentrated on „foreigners“, what is it that makes the status of „foreigner“ so open to infringement of rights and fair treatment? Abolitionisms needs to be expanded to questions of citizenship and human rights in war and peace. Has one of the technocratic arguments against imprisonment been refuted? If not, how come we can – in a time of quality management and evaluation – afford such a monstrous error? Is it because the fantasy is we can get rid of certain people for good (by prison or by transportation)? Do societies and states foster eliminatory fantasies again? If so, do we understand why there are no other ideas for possible solutions of the problems brought about by the present mode of production? Can we provide some? Abolitionism needs to be expanded to questions of how this mode of production works.

Discussion

How successful has prison abolition been? Does the prison fit the abolitionist moral catego-ries? What is the future of prisons: expansion or oblivion? Utilitarianism vs. Rigorism What about this wikepdia definition of the prison abolition movement?: The prison abolition movement is a movement that seeks to reduce or eliminate prisons and the prison system, and replace them with more humane and effective systems. It is distinct from prison reform, which is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons; however, relying on prisons less can signifi-cantly improve their conditions by eliminating overcrowding.- Some organizations such as the Anarchist Black Cross seek total abolishment of the prison system, not intending to replace it with other govern-ment controlled systems. Anarchist organizations believe that the best form of justice arises naturally out of social contracts. However, many supporters for prison abolition intend to replace it with other systems, reducing prisons to a smaller role in society. Is it the overuse of imprisonment that impacts fundamental human rights – especially those convicted for lesser crimes – or ist it the use of imprisonment that does it? Sweden has closed 4 prisons lately. What does that mean?

Reading

Christie, Nils (1994/2013) Crime control as industry. London: Routledge
Davis, Angela (1999) The Prison Industrial Complex, CD-ROM (Audiobook), AK Press
Mathiesen, Thomas (2000) Prison on trial, 2nd ed., Winchester
Morris, Mark (1976). Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists. Syracuse, NY: Prison Research Education Action Project.
Religious Society of Friends. Minute on Prison Abolition Approved by the Canadian Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in 1981 (Minute 93)

Penal Law, Criminal Justice, Punishment

History

Penal law, criminal justice, and punishment by state organs seem to be a necessary evil to most people, let alone politicians. They seem natural and therefore eternal. It is intriguing to see how even the most peaceful visions of a perfect society seem unable to exclude crime and punishment from their sketches of utopia. How, then, did it come about that – only a few years ago – the International Conference on Prison Abolition (ICOPA) took the audacious step to rename itself and to substitute “Penal” for “Prison” in its name? To abolish the penal system altogether? Isn’t that proof of a psychiatric condition, a delusion? Caution: the same could have been said (and was said) about early abolitionists like Elijah P. Lovejoy. It was not that they were wrong. They just were early, very early. To hold back our judgement, one should first examine the nature of state punishment. Crime and punishment are not as old as they seem. They were inventions just like monasteries, schools, and a standing army. Inventions like money and private property, and ranks in the military hierarchy. They seem natural to most people, and they are parameters of our daily lives that are not questioned, but that does not mean they are not man-made and not historical in their nature and not changeable. As far as crime and punishment are concerned, one belongs to the other. The siblings were not always with us. Early humans did not know them. Modern civilizations do. What does that mean in years? If early (physically modern) humans started 200 000 years ago, and if (psy-chologically speaking) modern humans started some 50 000 years ago, this would mean that most of human history has been a history without crime and punishment. Some 12 000 years ago, human nomads turned into settlers and peasants in some places, laying the groundwork for the earliest and all the later civilizations until this very day. Even then, until - anthropolog-ically speaking – yesterday, crime and punishment had not been invented. It took vertical structures like proto-states to do that. To have a crime you have to create an abstraction, a kind of behaviour, that you link to a de-terminate negative sanction: if you do this, we shall do that to you. This requires the power structure of a vertical society, a society having a political elite and subaltern classes. You need, in other words, a state. Before that, you have akephalic societies and their highly complicated – and relatively soft – conflict resolutions. It is only with the ascent of the sovereign ruler that crime rises and pun-ishment takes the form today considered as normal. There have been theoretical abolitionists. They were mostly juridical experts with an interest in the outlines of a just society. Krause, Gross, Stirner. Maybe the most articulate of our times were Nils Christie and Louk Hulsman. Christie is moest in his views, but radical in his starting point: the reduction of suffering, the limits to human pains. Louk Hulsman began as a ministerial clerk in the defense ministry, became professor of law, and later started to question the very foundations of penal law and sanctions. He went all the way to deconstructing the very concepts of crime and punishment. To him, so-called crimes should not be analyzed within the framework of the crime discourse, but the discourse itself should be subjected to analysis. So, for him, “crimes” were just one kind of problematic situations among others, and he questioned the reasons for separating them from other problematic situations. This lent itself to jokes about him, but this was his revolutionary contribution, a contribution still to be spelled out, and to taken to action.

Discussion

Is René van Swaaningen right when he states:

First, I like to stress that abolitionism’s positive, reconstructive message has been taken up by various other perspectives. I see very clear traces of abolitionist thought in ‘restorative justice’ (Braithwaite, etc.), peacemaking criminology (Pepinsky, etc.), the ‘social harm’ approach (Hillyard, etc.), constitutive criminology (Henry & Milovanov-ic). The ‘penal core’ of abolitionism has got under serious pressure in the ‘punitive turn’ in many Western countries, notably in the Netherlands; the country with the largest in-crease in imprisonment in the whole world – albeit we started at a very low level. In a climate where a punitive populism rules traditional penal abolitionism is easily dis-carded as loony idealism. So, many (previous) abolitionists have changed their focus a bit, by first arguing against punitiveness as such. The literature on ‘the new punitive-ness’ can be seen as a reformulation of abolitionism’s negative critique. As an academic perspective abolitionism was in a way ‘not good enough’: it was often theoretically sloppy, there was little sound empirical research done in the tradition and the moralistic undertone was often too dominant. At least my students are no longer used to normative, prescriptive discourse and even get irritated when ‘science’ is mixed up with moralism; particularly Left wing moralism. We can still get the aboli-tionist message across amongst the present generation students, I think, but we have to use another tone than 25 years ago: less ‘standpoint criminology’, more practical, em-pirical arguments, more connection with concrete policy debates and with different criminological debates (in: Feest & Paul 2008).

Does the criminal law protect? What is the relevance of the dark figures?

What is the moral ground for and against criminal justice? What makes it difficult to argue for the abolition of the criminal justice system? Hegel and the negation of the negation of law

Reading

De Folter, Rolf S. (1986) On the methodological foundation of the abolitionist approach to the criminal justice system. A comparison of the ideas of Hulsman, Mathiesen and Foucault. Contemporary Crises 10: 39-62. Deleuze, Gilles (1990 and 1993) Postskriptum über die Kontrollgesellschaften. In: Deleuze, Gilles: Unterhand-lungen. 1972-1990, Frankfurt am Main 1993 Hulsman, Louk/Jacqueline Bernat de Celis (1982) Peines perdues: le système pénal en question, Paris, Centurion Hulsman, Louk (1983) Warum sollte das Strafrecht Funktionen haben? KrimJ: 61 ff. Scheerer, Sebastian (2001) Kritik der strafenden Vernunft, in: Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften, H. 1/2001, 69-83. Von Trotha, Trutz (1983) Limits to Pain. Diskussionsbeitrag zu einer Abhandlung von Nils Christie. In: Krimi-nologisches Journal, Heft 1/1983, S. 34- 53

Abolitionism-s

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Back to the Roots: Liberation as domination

The Greatest Revolution Ever?

Abolishing the Slave Trade

The End of Slavery

Discussion

Reading

Prostitution

History

Discussion

Reading

Death Penalty

History

Protagonists, Milestones, and Setbacks

Reading

Prisons

Quakers

Gradualism

Abolitionism

Discussion

Reading

Penal Law, Criminal Justice, Punishment

History

Discussion

Reading

Further Reading

Navigationsmenü

Abolitionism-s

Back to the Roots: Liberation as domination

The Greatest Revolution Ever?

Abolishing the Slave Trade

The End of Slavery

Discussion

Reading

Prostitution

History

Discussion

Reading

Death Penalty

History

Protagonists, Milestones, and Setbacks

Reading

Prisons

Quakers

Gradualism

Abolitionism

Discussion

Reading

Penal Law, Criminal Justice, Punishment

History

Discussion

Reading

Further Reading

Navigationsmenü

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