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| Prisons are to be abolished. Especially prisons-for-punishment. But to achieve this goal will be no easy task, given the popularity of prisons among politicians, media and great segments of the population. What is needed is both an abolitionist stance and strategies for concrete abolitions. | | Prisons are to be abolished. Especially prisons-for-punishment. But to achieve this goal will be no easy task, given the popularity of prisons among politicians, media and great segments of the population. What is needed is both an abolitionist stance and strategies for concrete abolitions. |
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| === Reductionism === | | === An abolitionist stance === |
| This means reducing the capacity of prisons, until there is nothing (or not much) left. It means to demand the destruction of (e.g. older, outmoded, unused) prisons and resist the building of new ones (Rutherford 1984).
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| The theory behind that strategy is that capacity determines imprisonment rates, i.e. overcapacity will eventually be filled. This may be so. But will the lack of prison cells change the sentencing behavior of judges? Waiting lists as an alternative to overcrowding were practiced for quite a while in the Netherlands (before reductionism was swept away by a new prison building boom). Publishing and comparing imprisonment rates can serve as a tool for shaming high-incarceration countries. A modern version of quantitative reductionism is the movement for "justice reinvestment" ( Chris Fox, Kevin Albertson, Kevin Wong 2013). Here the focus is explicitely on re-directing the funds spent on prisons in a more reasonable direction (community alternatives, education). "The question should be 'What can be done to strengthen the capacity of high incarceration neighborhoods to keep their residents out of prison?' not "Where should we send this individual'" (Tucker/Cadora 2003).
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| === Normalization of prison conditions ===
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| While quantitative reductionism focusses on imprisonment rates, i.e. frequency and length of imprisonment, here the stress is on the "depth" of imprisonment (Downes), i.e. the prison conditions. If imprisonment is to be nothing more than the deprivation of liberty (European Prison Rules), the situation within prisons should approach "normal" living and working conditions as much as possible. Why should imprisoned citizens not have normal voting right? Why should imprisoned workers not be paid regular salaries? When we demand for prisoners normal rights as citizens and workers, the inner logic of such demands points to a gradual abolition of prisons as we know them (Mitford 1973). Even the deprivation of liberty itself allows for gradation in terms of more or less open prisons. In a similar vein Hedda Giertsen calls for "Tuning down prisons": placing responsibility where it should be, in the ordinary public services, as it is for other citizens" (Giertsen 2015, 292). Obviously, the term "normalization" is not used here in Foucault's sense, but as a normative principle around which some recent prison reformers , including prisoners, are rallying (cf. Feest 1999).
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| === Segmentary abolition ===
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| Since prisons have not always existed, a world without prisons is perfectly conceivable. But it is unlikely that such an institution can be abolished in one go. Another strategy is therefore to demand the abolition of specific sectors of the prison system. This was successfully done in Norway and Germany with work houses, in Massachussets with juvenile training schools. It was tried with varying success with respect to short-term imprisonment (Germany), fine-default imprisonment (Denmark, Sweden) and with lifetime imprisonment (Norway, Spain) etc. It has also been advocated for deportation prisons (Graebsch 2008), juvenile prisons (Schumann et al. 1981) or for womens prisons (Carlen 1990). Our own focus on "Strafanstalt", on serving prisons, on prisons-as-punishment, can be seen as a segmentary approach. We advocate abolishing these kinds of prisons, but we are well aware that there are other prisons or prison-like institutions (e.g. pre-trial prisons; security detention; deportation facilities) that may need to be abolished too.
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| === Linking up the strategies ===
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| Obviously, these strategies are not mutually exclusive. They will have to be combined with "Anti-Funktionsarbeit" (Mathiesen 1989, 168 ff), i.e. creating a public discourse about the explicit and implicit functions of prisons. And they need to link up with existing movements for restorative justice. This is exactly what Fay Honey Knopp and her co-abolitionists had in mind, with explicit reference to Thomas Mathiesen:
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| "We have structured an attrition model as one example of a long range process for abolition.'Attrition', which means the rubbing away or wearing down by friction, reflects the persistent and continuing strategy necessary to diminish the function and power of prisons in our society.To clarify our terms, the reforms we recommend are "abolishing-type" reforms: those that do not add improvement to or legitimize the prevailing system. We also call for partial abolitions of the system: abolishing certain criminal laws, abolishing bail and pretrial detention and abolishing indeterminate sentences and parole" (Morris 1976, ch.3).
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| == Beyond Prisons and Punishment == | | == Beyond Prisons and Punishment == |