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Abolitionism

Version vom 15. Juli 2013, 14:52 Uhr von Tiao (Diskussion | Beiträge)

The Concept

Abolitionism refers to a system of ideas (and, possibly, a political programme and a social movement) that argues in favour of the elimination of a legal institution that is seen as a contradiction to fundamental values.


challenges the moral justification of a (repressive) legal institution, argues for its elimination, and/or such as slavery, the death penalty, and/or to a movement which strives to do away with it, i.e. to abolish it.

striving to abolish While abolitionism in the sense of a movement The term is rooted in Roman Law, where the abolitio was a legal institution part of the legal terminologytimes, when goes back to ancient Roman times. In Latin the verb abolēre (aboleō) means: to do away with something, and to do so completely, wholly. To nullify, and that is also the meaning of the present-day English verb "to abolish" - and of its equivalents in today's Roman languages, like, e.g., abolir, abolire ... . The noun abolitio was used in Roman law. It meant something like "wiping out a criminal prosecution against somebody before a verdict was spoken". In other words, the lifting of criminal prosecution during the process.

There were two kinds of abolition in Roman law, the abolitio privata and the abolitio publica, the private and the public one. Whereas the abolitio privata had only limited relevance, the abolitio publica was comparable to an amnesty – with the difference that an amnesty usually concerns convicted delinquents, whereas an abolition stops the criminal procedure and thus prevents the judge from reaching a verdict. In Roman times, the birthday of the Emperor or the birth of a crown prince or similar joyful occasions could be cause for such an abolitio. In later times, kings used to claim their right to inferfere with criminal procedures at their will. The king of France, e.g., would just write a letter of abolition (lettre d’abolition) to free any of his subjects from prosecution – the opposite being the more infamous lettre de cachet which would send anyone who had angered the king into the dungeon.

The nouns abolitionist and abolitionism did not appear until much later. They are linked to demands “from below” against repressive legal institutions that are being seen as utterly unjust by some people who therefore demand their abolition (= abolitionists). The first movement that used these terms was the group around Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharpe and others who campaigned – starting in 1787 - against the trans-atlantic slave-trade.

Later, other movements also called themselves abolitionist – especially those that vindicated the rights of prostitutes (demanding the abolition of repressive legislation), the end of slavery as a legal institution, the end of capital punishment, prisons, or, even more broadly, the criminal justice system as a whole. What is the common denominator of all these movements and ideologies? Well, in spite of their significant differences, each and every abolitionist movement consists of

  1. the demand for an immediate end to a practice which is
  2. tolerated or prescribed by the present legal order on the one hand, but
  3. seen as a dramatic violation of higher values and normative orders by part of the public and abolitionists.

To sum it all up: all abolitionist movements are calling for the immediate end of a legal institution they see as inhumane.

The First Abolitionist Movements

Trans-atlantic slave trade

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, slavery had few opponents in England. Indeed, English society valued the slave trade for its significant contribution to the nation’s wealth, and romanticized the adventurous lives of traders on the high seas. In the late eighteenth century, however, Quakers and other religious leaders began to change attitudes toward slavery by drawing attention to the inhumanity and cruelty of the slave trade. One of most effective voices against slavery in England was Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846). Clarkson, along with the abolitionist Granville Sharpe, established the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. 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. 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. (from: “I will be heard” - Origins.)

Slavery

Moderate and radical critics of slavery employed all manner of strategies to persuade the American public and its leadership to end this "peculiar institution"..

Abolitionists vs. Gradualists

Gradualists wanted to slowly free slaves and send them back to Africa. This is how the West African State of Liberia came into existence. Abolitionsts did not believe that this strategy could ever work out.

Peaceful and violent abolitionists

Persuasion and Agitation

Peaceful abolitionists assembled individuals to form groups of like-minded individuals to fight as a body. Initially, groups like the American Anti-Slavery Society used lecturing and moral persuasion to attempt to change the hearts and minds of individuals. Many later activists found moral persuasion tactics insufficient and turned their attention to political lobbying. Most famous of all abolitionist activities was the Underground Railroad, a network of assistance and safe houses for runaway slaves. The Underground Railroad stretched from the Southern states to Canada, and until 1865 provided shelter, safety, and guidance for thousands of runaway slaves. Activists used the press to spread the abolitionist message. Newspapers like William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator circulated vehement attacks on government sanctioned bondage. Other publications, such as pamphlets and leaflets, contained anti-slavery poems, slogans, essays, sermons, and songs. 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.

Armed abolitionism: terrorism for good ends?

Still other abolitionists felt that violence was the only way to end slavery. These militants resorted to extreme and deadly tactics, and incited violent insurrections. These acts of terror aroused fear in slaveholders, but also led to the execution of perpetrators (from: “I will be heard” – Strategies).

One of these militants was a man named John Brown.

John Brown was a man of action -- a man who would not be deterred from his mission of abolishing slavery. On October 16, 1859, he led 21 men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan to arm slaves with the weapons he and his men seized from the arsenal was 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.

John Brown was born into a deeply religious family in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800. Led by a father who was vehemently opposed to slavery, the family moved to northern Ohio when John was five, to a district that would become known for its antislavery views.

During his first fifty years, Brown moved about the country, settling in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, and taking along his ever-growing family. (He would father twenty children.) Working at various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator, he never was finacially successful -- he even filed for bankruptcy when in his forties. His lack of funds, however, did not keep him from supporting causes he believed in. He helped finance the publication of David Walker's Appeal and Henry Highland's "Call to Rebellion" speech. He gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites, an organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.

In 1847 Frederick Douglass met Brown for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Of the meeting Douglass stated that, "though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery." It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined his plan to Douglass to lead a war to free slaves.

Brown moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. The community had been established thanks to the philanthropy of Gerrit Smith, who donated tracts of at least 50 acres to black families willing to clear and farm the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish his own farm there as well, in order to lead the blacks by his example and to act as a "kind father to them."

Despite his contributions to the antislavery cause, Brown did not emerge as a figure of major significance until 1855 after he followed five of his sons to the Kansas territory. There, he became the leader of antislavery guerillas and fought a proslavery attack against the antislavery town of Lawrence. The following year, in retribution for another attack, Brown went to a proslavery town and brutally killed five of its settlers. Brown and his sons would continue to fight in the territory and in Missouri for the rest of the year.

Brown returned to the east and began to think more seriously about his plan for a war in Virginia against slavery. He sought money to fund an "army" he would lead. On October 16, 1859, he set his plan to action when he and 21 other men -- 5 blacks and 16 whites -- raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Brown was wounded and quickly captured, and moved to Charlestown, Virginia, where he was tried and convicted of treason, Before hearing his sentence, Brown was allowed make an address to the court.


. . . I believe to have interfered as I have done, . . . in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done."


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. . . ."

John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859. (from: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1550.html)

Success Story

The US abolished slavery on January 31, 1865, by means of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution reading: 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.” Brazil followed in 1888. Today, there is still hidden de facto slavery in many parts of the world, but not a single country officially admits de jure slavery on its territory.

Later Aims of Abolitionist Movements

Prostitution

The Cause for Conflict

In the 1860s, the British government enacted some so-called Contagious Diseases Acts that were aimed at a repressive control of prostitutes deemed by many a violation of human rights. The Contagious Diseases Acts , also known as the CD Acts, were originally passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1864, with alterations and editions made in 1866 and 1869. In 1862, a committee was established to inquire into venereal disease in the armed forces; on its recommendation the first Contagious Diseases Act was passed. The legislation allowed police officers to arrest prostitutes in certain ports and army towns, and the women were then subjected to compulsory checks for venereal disease. If a woman was declared to be infected, she would be confined in what was known as a Lock Hospital until "cured". The original act was only lawful in a few selected naval ports and army towns, but by 1869 the acts had been extended to be in operation in eighteen "subjected districts".

The Act of 1864 stated that women found to be infected could be interned in locked hospitals for up to three months, a period gradually extended to one year with the 1869 Act. These measures were justified by medical and military officials as the most effective method to shield men from venereal disease. As military men were discouraged from marriage and homosexual behaviour was criminal, prostitution was considered a necessary evil. However, no provision was made for the examination of prostitutes' clientele. This became a major point of controversy. After 1866, proposals were introduced to extend the acts to the north of England and to the civilian population. The issue exploded the debate over the double standards between men and women. It was one of the first political issues that led to women organizing themselves and actively campaigning for their rights.

A prostitute's testimony encouraged by Josephine Butler:

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!

Regulating prostitution was the government's attempt to control the high level of venereal disease in its armed forces. By 1864, one out of three sick cases in the army were caused by venereal disease; admissions into hospitals for gonorrhoea and syphilis reached 290.7 per 1,000 of total troop strength.

In 1866, the Association for the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established. It argued for the extension into the whole country. In 1869, the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established; initially restricting women from its meetings, causing the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts to be quickly established by Josephine Butler by December of that same year. .

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

The main cause for conflict were the conditions in lock hospitals. If a woman was declared diseased she would be confined in what were known as Lock hospitals. The Lock hospitals or Lock wards were designed specifically to treat those infected with a venereal disease. Conditions in Lock Hospitals were inadequate. An 1882 survey estimated that there were only 402 beds for female patients in all the voluntary lock hospitals in Great Britain, and out of this number only 232 were "funded for use". Female venereal patients generally had to resort to workhouse infirmaries.

What was to be Abolished?

If women are punished for sex with men outside of marriage, but men are not, this raises a question of equality before the law. Such a question can be answered, in principle, either by extending punishment to men or by abolishing punishment for women - in both cases both sexes would be equal.

If one aims at the end of prostitution as such, one might try punishing both women and men equally, and see if it works.

If one aims at a so-called pragmatic solution, i.e. one that takes into account the futility of all attempts to stop prostitution altogehter during the ages, and if one resolves to just try and reduce the harm that is being inflicted by prostitution on both the prostitutes themselves and on others, one might try decriminalization.

Both these belief systems and strategies have had their lieux.

In Scandinavia, equal punishment was used in order to stop prostitution. In other countries, decriminalization was being tried.

Ideological opposition still exists. The question is: what does abolitioism mean?

Success Story?

After a struggle of 16 years, the Acts were repealed. At the beginning and in the course of the 20th century, the legal prostitution regimes were softened and prostitutes gained some legal equality. On the other hand, a different conception arose about what was to be understood as abolitionism in this context. Some feminists argued that prostitution itself had to be abolished. As a consequence, the old and latent conflict between those who advocated civil rights for prostitutes on the one hand, and others who advocated an end to prostitution as such, on the other hand, became more virulent.

Death Penalty

Reasons for Abolition

  • State has no Right (Social Contract). The death penalty (capital punishment) can be seen as a violation of human rights. To deny the right to life is a serious challenge to the very idea of rights belonging to a human being.
  • Uselessness and Counterproductivity (Beccaria ... )
  • Irreversibility of wrongful executions.

Protagonists and their Arguments:

  • One of the first Quakers by the name of John Bellers (1654-1775) was critical of the death penalty, as was Cesare Beccaria (/1764), even if Beccaria allowed for the death penalty to persist in cases of high treason in the penal code of Lombardy at the late 18th century in the development of which he was involved. Beccaria founded his argument upon the social contract: nobody would agree to his losing his life in such a contract. German philosopher Immanuel Kant saw it quite differently, though.

Situation Today

Despite pressure for the abolition of the death penalty, many countries in the world still maintain the death penalty in their criminal codes and in practice. Capital punishment has, in the past, been practised by most societies; currently 58 nations actively practise it, and 97 countries have abolished it (the remainder have not used it for 10 years or allow it only in exceptional circumstances such as wartime).

Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment.

Currently, Amnesty International considers most countries abolitionist.

The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, in 2007, 2008 and 2010, non-binding resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with a view to eventual abolition.

Although many 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 (although in India, Indonesia and in many US states it is rarely employed). Each of these four nations voted against the General Assembly resolutions. (from. capital punishment, in: en.wikipedia).

Where and why does capital punishment persist?

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 professiona.

Prisons

Cause for Conflict

  • Ideal and Reality (Charles Dickens; Academy of Crime; Class, Race, Angela Davis and Prison ...)
  • Decline of the Ideal (Warehousing)
  • Social basis of abolition: Prison is old-fashioned (Deleuze). Widening gap between value of freedom of movement and communication on the one and cage-confinement on the other hand.

Waht is to be abolished?

  • Prison as 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.
  • Not: confinement per se. Not confinement for medical reasons or reasons of public security (serial killer).
  • Empirical hypothesis: public security can be guaranteed as well as with prisons or even better by ambulatory measures.

Starting a Movement

  • Foucault and France.
  • RAP in Great Britain
  • RAF in Germany
  • 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.

Questions: negative reforms only (Mathiesen, Frankfurter Schule, ...) oder positive Vorschläge (Thomas Bianchi). Problem der moralischen Basis des Abolitionsdiskurses: keine unschuldigen Opfer wie die Sklaven, sondern schuldige Täter.

Criminal Justice System

Cause for Conflict

  • 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

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.

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.
  • Deleuze, Gilles (1990) Das elektronische Halsband (orig.: L'Autre Journal, 1, Mai 1990) http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/netzkritik/postskriptum.html.
  • 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.
  • 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 [1].

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