Voices of Abolition: Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

It's time to stop talking about reforming prisons and to start working for their complete abolition. That means basically three things:

*First, admitting that prisons can't be reformed, since the very nature of prisons requires brutality and contempt for the people imprisoned.

Judge Carter, of Ohio, avowed himself a radical on prison discipline. He favored the abolishment of prisons, and the use of greater efforts for the prevention of crime. Any system of imprisonment or punishment was degradation, and could not reform a man. He would abolish all prison walls, and release all confined within them...

:—Minutes of the 1870 Congress of the American Prison Association/American Correctional Association

'''There ought to be no jails; and if it were not for the fact that the people on the outside are so grasping and heartless in their dealings with the people on the inside, there would be no such institutions as jails''' .... The only way in the world to abolish crime and criminals is to abolish the big ones and the little ones together. Make fair conditions of life. Give men a chance to live .... Nobody would steal if he could get something of his own some easier way. Nobody will commit burglary when he has a house full. The only way to cure these conditions is by equality. There should be no jails. They do not accomplish what they pretend to accomplish. If you would wipe them out there would be no more criminals than now. They terrorize nobody. They are a blot upon any civilization, and a jail is an evidence of the lack of charity of the people on the outside who make the jails and fill them with the victims of their greed.

The prison, as now tolerated, is a constant threat to everyone's security. An anachronistic relic of medieval concepts of crime and punishment, it not only does not cure the crime problem; it perpetuates and multiplies it. We profess to rely upon the prison for our safety; yet it is directly responsible for much of the damage that society suffers at the hands of offenders. On the basis of my own experience, I am convinced that prisons must be abolished.

:—Ralph Banay, formerly in charge of the psychiatric clinic at Sing Sing Prison, "Should Prisons be Abolished?" New York Times Magazine, January 30, 1955

The elimination of imprisonment may at first seem like a radical step, but alternatives to imprisonment are already widespread-fines and probation are often used, and traffic law violators are sometimes sentenced to attend classes in driver education. The advocacy of prison abolition implies simply that other courses of action, including, sometimes, doing nothing at all, are preferable to imprisonment.

I've seen too much injustice to remain mute or still. The struggle against injustice cannot be muffled by prison walls.

—A letter from prison by John Cluchette, printed in Angela Davis, If They Come in the Morning (New York, Signet, 1971)

'''After a single night''' at the Nevada State Prison, for example, 23 judges from all over the U.S. emerged "appalled at the homosexuality," shaken by the inmates' "soul-shattering bitterness" and upset by "men raving, screaming and pounding on the walls." Kansas Judge E. Newton Vickers summed up, "I felt like an animal in a cage. Ten years in there must be like 100 or maybe 200." Vickers urged Nevada to "send two bulldozers out there and tear the damn thing to the ground."

—"The Shame of Prisons," Time, January 18, 1971

It is time to begin to dismantle the prison system--lock, stock and bar. It is beyond renovation. The only way to save it is to destroy it--or, most of it.

Whether or not we are skeptical of constitutional approaches, we can appreciate them as one of the most promising components of a movement to abolish prisons. Four substantial forces for change are at work in a dynamic pattern:

Politically aware prisoners see the use of legal tools as part of an effective strategy to acquire power over their own lives. Other prisoners view the courts as the single hope for relief from prison oppression. Whatever the motivation, a legally empowered prisoner population is crucial to any effective prison strategy.

If there were but one word to describe the necessary ingredient for acquiring a more just economic and social order, that word would be "empowerment."

The focus on power is the major issue. The only meaningful way to change the prevailing American system of liberty for the free, justice for some, and inequality for all, is thru shifts in the distribution of power.  Any ghetto dweller can link powerlessness to poverty—it is caused by lack of money. They are poor because they have first, insufficient income—and second, no access to methods of increasing that income-that is, no power.

If being poor is having no money, "poverty in the U.S. is almost a picayune problem. A redistribution of about $15 billion a year (less than two percent of the Gross National Product) would bring every poor person above the present poverty line." The amount involved is less than half the U.S. annual expenditure on the Vietnam War.

Thus the questions "Who decides?" and "Who benefits?" are most relevant. They must be raised repeatedly. If the just equalization of power, resources, income and self-respect could rehabilitate the community, who decides otherwise? As abolitionists seek answers by engaging in power structure research, strategies for change will emerge.

True community requires the exercise of power as a condition for self-esteem and full humanity. The need for potency, which is another way of phrasing the struggle for self-esteem, is common to all of us. "We see its positive form in the rebellion at Attica, where the leader of the revolting prison inmates proclaimed: 'We don't want to be treated any longer as statistics, as numbers .... We want to be treated as human beings, we will be treated as human beings.' "

Prison is a microcosm of society. The abuse of selected and particular segments of the population labeled "criminal" is rampant on both sides of the walls. The struggle for justice should be the primary agenda for all concerned Americans.

This is the key to an abolitionist perspective on social change. Abolition is a long range struggle, an unending process: it is never "finished," the phasing out is never completed. Strategies and actions recommended in this handbook seek to gradually limit, diminish, or restrain certain forms of power wielded by the criminal (in)justice systems.

Sometimes our recommended strategies and actions utilize conventional judicial and legislative processes. Abolitionists are not apprehensive about working within the system, so long as it permits us to change and limit the system. When systemic options prove inadequate, abolitionists strive for newer and more creative approaches—building alternatives to existing structures and processes.

The abolitionist's task is clear—to prevent the system from masking its true nature. The system dresses itself up: we undress the system. We strip it down to the reality: the cage and the key. We demystify. We ask the simple but central political question: "Who decides?" We raise the moral issue: "By what right?" We challenge the old configurations of power. We begin to change the old, begin to create the new.

From:

*[https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapter1.shtml Instead of Prisons. A Handbook for Abolitionists. Chapter 1: Time to Begin. Voices of Abolition]