#there's two ways of thinking about prison abolition imho

[urcrookedneighbor]

Undertake the exercise yourself. Hell, even look into the disability rights movement and understand what deinstitutionalization activists and advocates have said and fought for. But seek to imagine what a rehabilitating justice system would look like.

And also question your assumption that the status quo is at all effective at protecting the victims of crime x? Like Freakanomics is not a reliable source for the things that it says are true (e.g. their assertion that the decline in crime rates is attributable to two factors alone: the legalization of abortion in the US in the 70s and the police.) but the If Books Could Kill podcast did an excellent episode providing the context for the claims made in that book that the book fails to provide. What has criminology research found? What do we think makes us safer? What has been found to be closely correlated with increased "safety"? Crime rates aren't one to one with safety, bc crime rates can be estimated differently depending on how much crime the researcher thinks is not reported to the police. And good scholarship identifies the thing that made them think/use that amount of unreported crime.

And another thing! Shame is a dangerous weapon.

TL:DR Google harm reduction. And read the notes on this very post!

for everyone who’s for prison abolition “but not sexual predators!!!” I am begging you to understand how many guys write our prison books program who are sexually deviant, ineligible for parole EVER, and have the mental capacity of elementary-age children.

their letters are a barely legible scrawl of broken sentences or they get someone else to write the letter for them and scribble their names at the bottom with letters backwards. they ask for coloring books and comic books and books with lots of pictures because they can’t read. they will tell us that they’re sexual predators in their letters but from the way they talk about it, it’s clear they don’t understand what that means, it’s just something someone told them.

they are never getting out of prison.

they will die in prison.

they can barely write their names.