how to work for prison abolition wihtout being a lawyer

What does prison abolition feel like?

GQ: Prison abolition is an idea, when first encountered, that can feel incredibly radical and infeasible. How did you first encounter it, and was there a particular moment where you felt like the switch had been flipped for you?

What is abolishing punishment?

I say that abolition is a political vision with a goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.

How do I make the transition from another job to law?

To make the transition to law as successful as possible, take a look the work experience you've gained so far and match what transferable skills you could bring to the legal field. For example, law requires fantastic people skills so coming from the hospitality, social care or services industry will give you a great head start in this area.

Can you become a lawyer without any prior knowledge of law?

There are qualifications at varying levels which can be taken without any prior knowledge of the law and they give a good, solid understanding of the legal world.

What do abolitionists want instead of prison?

Perspective 8: Abolitionists believe that crime is a consequence of a broken society, and recourses must be used towards social programs instead of the funding of prisons. They advocate for public solutions to public problems, producing effects which will benefit everyone in society.

What can we do about prison reform?

SHORT-TERM REFORMSCreate Transforming Prisons Act.Accelerate Decarceration Begun During Pandemic.Encourage Rehabilitative Focus in State Prisons.Foster Greater Use of Community Sanctions.Embrace Rehabilitative/Restorative Community Justice Models.Encourage Collaborations between Corrections Agencies and Researchers.More items...

Why we should not abolish prisons?

The rampant violence and chaos within prisons also lead to high reoffending rates, especially for violent crimes 10. Within prison, violence and sexual abuse are rampant. Convicts often have to use violence to prove themselves to other inmates in order to be accepted into their social circle.

What did abolitionists do?

An abolitionist, as the name implies, is a person who sought to abolish slavery during the 19th century. More specifically, these individuals sought the immediate and full emancipation of all enslaved people.

What is a Level 4 prison?

Level IV – Facilities have a secure perimeter with internal and external armed coverage and housing units or cell block housing with cells non-adjacent to exterior walls.

Can criminals be reformed?

The National Institute of Justice reports that 76.6% of released prisoners are rearrested within five years, further supporting the idea that many caught in the system are incapable of change. But the flip side of the recidivism statistic confirms that 23.4% of ex-offenders reformed themselves.

What would happen if there were no prisons?

A world without prisons works to ensure universal basic income, housing, and healthcare, recognizing that crime is inextricably linked to structures of poverty.

Should prisons be privatized?

Privatizing prisons can reduce prison overpopulation, making the facilities safer for inmates and employees. Private prisons can transform the broken government-run prison system. Private prisons offer innovative programs to lower the rates of re-imprisonment.

Can criminals change for the better?

Positive transformation in prison is possible, but it requires an inordinate amount of motivation, willpower and resilience. Individuals who make progress in giving up harmful behaviors (including crime) eventually cease to avoid their pain and dive deep into an exploration of their suffering.

What is abolitionism today?

Abolition exists anytime someone stands up against slavery. The passion, commitment and actions of individuals at every step along this continuum form a network of modern-day freedom conductors fighting against the slavers and supporting the enslaved.

Who is a famous abolitionist?

Five AbolitionistsFrederick Douglass, Courtesy: New-York Historical Society.William Lloyd Garrison, Courtesy: Metropolitan Museum of Art.Angelina Grimké, Courtesy: Massachusetts Historical Society.John Brown, Courtesy: Library of Congress.Harriet Beecher Stowe, Courtesy: Harvard University Fine Arts Library.

What country abolished slavery first?

HaitiIt was the first country to do so. The next year, Haiti published its first constitution. Article 2 stated: “Slavery is forever abolished.” By abolishing slavery in its entirety, Haiti also abolished the slave trade, unlike the two-step approach of the European nations and the United States.

What is the goal of abolition?

I say that abolition is a political vision with a goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment. That it's not just about getting rid of building cages, it's about actually undoing the society that continues to feed on and maintain the oppression of masses of people through punishment, violence, and control. Because the prison-industrial complex isn't an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. And so we have to be building models today that develop and represent how we want to live in the future. It's both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.

Is the prison-industrial complex broken?

The prison-industrial complex isn’t broken. It’s doing exactly what it's meant to do. By calling for any of these reforms, you immediately re-entrench the logic that is underpinning its systemic nature. The prison-industrial complex—both prisons, policing, surveillance—they feed off of reform.

Why were prisons not originally married to police?

Prisons weren’t originally married to a police force; police forces as we know them today grew out of ad hoc militia and mercenaries formed to hunt fugitive enslaved Africans and capture them for reward money, and to enforce the state’s slave code.

What is the abolitionist thought?

Second, abolitionist thought is not only very aware of the reality of violence and has considered the need to address harm, including gendered and sexualized harm, but has worked hard to imagine meaningful ways of preventing, addressing, and healing harm and violence outside of frameworks of punishment and cages.

What did abolition of chattel slavery mean?

Thinking of the abolition of chattel slavery, abolition meant not just an end to the institution of slavery, but the beginning of the possibility of a free life for enslaved people. Abolition of police and prisons means an end to those things, but also building a new, better world that we all get to live in.

What is the system of prison and policing?

The system of prison and policing has been endlessly reformed almost since its moment of inception, and where it has landed us is this; an economy and legal system defined entirely by the premise of violence against Black, brown and Indigenous people, and the most extreme site of mass incarceration in the world.

Is decarceration an ideological process?

To be clear: decarceration is a material and concrete process, not an ideological or internal one. Reading resources and books, or even sharing them, doesn’t really get people out of cages. The harm caused by the prison industrial complex is material; our dismantling of it must also be material.

Fact-checking and anonymity

Like in other Briarpatch issues, every article in this issue was fact-checked. We take care to verify names, dates, laws and regulations, numbers and dollar figures, and geographic and historic statements.

Send a letter to writers or editors

The writers featured in this issue are excited to hear readers’ feedback on their contributions. Prisoners are deliberately and cruelly cut off from creative and political communities outside of prisons, and we want to break that isolation by inviting readers to send feedback to writers.

About the cover art

The cover artwork for this issue is American Goldfinch (2011) by Peter Collins. Collins was a lifer at Bath Institution near Kingston, Ontario. He died of cancer in 2015, after 32 years in prison. He was well-known for his love of birds and began to make art about them while incarcerated.

The editors

The following people helped create the Prison Abolition Issue. Some of them – those named above – were members of the editorial collective, and they attended meetings to help shape and guide the entire issue. Others worked with one specific writer to polish and publish their work.