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*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. | *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 === | ||
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. | *Why does capital punishment persist in some places and not in others? There is a strong abolitionist current in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_debate_in_the_United_States#Third_abolitionist_era.2C_mid-20th_century 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== | ==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) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_reform 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_Black_Cross 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: | |||
#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 | |||
#Prison inmates do not elicit the public sympathy reserved for innocent victims; they belong to a different moral category from victims of slavery | |||
#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== | ==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 | *Christie: Limits to Pain | ||
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: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). | :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. | 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=== | ||
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*Bergalli, Roberto, and Inaki Rivera Beiras, cords. (2012) Louk Hulsman: ¿Qué queda de los abolicionismos? Barcelona: Anthropos. | *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. | *Braithwaite, John (2002) Restorative Justice and Responsive Regulation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. | ||
*Deleuze, Gilles (1990 | *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; [http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/netzkritik/postskriptum.html]. | |||
*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 | *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. | *Hochschild, Adam (2005) Bury the Chains. The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery. New York: Houghton Mifflin 2005. | ||
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*Mathiesen, Thomas (1974) The Politics of Abolition. London. | *Mathiesen, Thomas (1974) The Politics of Abolition. London. | ||
*Mauz, Gerhard (1975) Das Spiel von Schuld und Sühne. Die Zukunft der Strafjustiz. Düsseldorf, Köln. | *Mauz, Gerhard (1975) Das Spiel von Schuld und Sühne. Die Zukunft der Strafjustiz. Düsseldorf, Köln. | ||
*Sayward, | *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 (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 [http://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/sowi/kriminologie/Publikationen/Scheerer_1984_Die_abolitionistische_Perspektive.pdf]. | *Scheerer, Sebastian (1984) Die abolitionistische Perspektive. Kriminologisches Journal 90-111 [http://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/sowi/kriminologie/Publikationen/Scheerer_1984_Die_abolitionistische_Perspektive.pdf]. | ||
==Weblinks== | ==Weblinks== | ||
*[http://www.abc-berlin.net/was-ist-abc#againstallprisons ABC Anarchist Black Cross: Why are we against prisons, all prisons?] | |||
*[http://www.powayusd.com/teachers/clewis/abolitionism_in_the_united_state.htm Abolitionism in the United States ...] | *[http://www.powayusd.com/teachers/clewis/abolitionism_in_the_united_state.htm Abolitionism in the United States ...] | ||
*[http://admin.bhbl.neric.org/~mmosall/ushistory/textbook/Chapter%208%20The%20Spirit%20of%20Reform/ch%208%20sect%204%20Abolitionist%20Movement.pdf The Abolitionist Movement. History Book] | *[http://admin.bhbl.neric.org/~mmosall/ushistory/textbook/Chapter%208%20The%20Spirit%20of%20Reform/ch%208%20sect%204%20Abolitionist%20Movement.pdf The Abolitionist Movement. History Book] | ||