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From your other replies, I get the sense it shouldn't be callied "prison abolition", but "prison minimization where it makes sense, lets see how far we can take

From your other replies, I get the sense it shouldn't be callied "prison abolition", but "prison minimization where it makes sense, lets see how far we can take it". The former sounds like the dumbest idea you could possibly have, while the latter sounds perfectly sensible. From that perspective, you could not possibly have chosen a worse name for your movement, and it'll guarantee its failure under a torrent of questions like "this man raped and murdered my daughter - and you want him to go free??" If you want to make a difference, call it something else.

burfog 6y ago
From the name "prison abolition", my first assumption is an alternative more like Sharia. Thieves get their hands chopped off. Other ideas include caning (as in Singapore) and hanging. It gets rid of prison. We save a lot of money. We still have a powerful deterrent to crime. So with that we get prison abolition while still keeping bad people from being uncontrolled. Everybody happy?
dragonwriter 6y ago
> From your other replies, I get the sense it shouldn't be callied "prison abolition", but "prison minimization where it makes sense, lets see how far we can take it". The latter is not sufficiently succinct as a label, and also not accurate. The goal of prison abolition is abolition. And even if some institutionalization is left, it probably won't much resemble modern imprisonment much in it's scope, design, purpose, focus, or role in society. It's similar (though longer term) to police abolition, which doesn't favor abolition of (even armed, uniformed) law enforcement, but does favor abolition of the monolithic all-purpose paramilitary local law enforcement agencies that dominate that function at the local level today. > If you want to make a difference, call it something else. Yeah, using a long phrase that people fall asleep.halfway through as a label for a political movement is effective messaging.

burfog 6y ago

From the name "prison abolition", my first assumption is an alternative more like Sharia. Thieves get their hands chopped off. Other ideas include caning (as in Singapore) and hanging. It gets rid of prison. We save a lot of money. We still have a powerful deterrent to crime. So with that we get prison abolition while still keeping bad people from being uncontrolled. Everybody happy?

dragonwriter 6y ago

> From your other replies, I get the sense it shouldn't be callied "prison abolition", but "prison minimization where it makes sense, lets see how far we can take it". The latter is not sufficiently succinct as a label, and also not accurate. The goal of prison abolition is abolition. And even if some institutionalization is left, it probably won't much resemble modern imprisonment much in it's scope, design, purpose, focus, or role in society. It's similar (though longer term) to police abolition, which doesn't favor abolition of (even armed, uniformed) law enforcement, but does favor abolition of the monolithic all-purpose paramilitary local law enforcement agencies that dominate that function at the local level today. > If you want to make a difference, call it something else. Yeah, using a long phrase that people fall asleep.halfway through as a label for a political movement is effective messaging.