Abolition
"The most immediate question today is how to prevent the further expansion of prison populations and how to bring as many imprisoned women and men as possible back into what prisoners call 'the free world.' How can we move to decriminalize drug use and the trade in sexual services? How can we take seriously strategies of restorative rather than exclusively punitive justice?"
- Angela Y. Davis,
Are Prisons Obsolete?
Are Prisons Obsolete?
Better Homes, Better Gardens, Kerry James Marshall
"As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm. People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation."
-Mariame Kaba
"Abolition is imagining and enacting a world yet to be."
- Nicole R. Fleetwood
"What, then, would it mean to imagine a system in which punishment is not allowed to become the source of corporate profit? How can we imagine a society in which race and class are not primary determinants of punishment? Or one in which punishment itself is no longer the central concern in the making of justice? An abolitionist approach that seeks to answer questions such as these would require us to imagine a constellation of alternative strategies and institutions, with the ultimate aim of removing the prison from the social and ideological landscapes of our society. In other words, we would not be looking for prisonlike substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment - demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance."
- Angela Y. Davis,
Are Prisons Obsolete?
Are Prisons Obsolete?
Constellation of Alternative Strategies: Community Care Networks
"In addition to the immediate family, we are fortunate to have a network of friends that we consider part of our extended family, including fellow UCSC professors, graduate students, and staff members, who also undergirded our familial efforts. This extended familial network gave José a broader community who,at different times,played crucial roles in easing him over the difficult hurdles as Josélearned to be a free man again.
- Aida Hurtado,
"Gloria Anzaldúa's Seven Stages of Conocimiento in Redefining Latino Masculinity: Jose's Story"
"Gloria Anzaldúa's Seven Stages of Conocimiento in Redefining Latino Masculinity: Jose's Story"