America is now home to a burgeoning prison abolitionist movement. The word abolition focuses on a negative goal, but prison abolitionists have a positive agenda that is just as important. They believe the key to abolishing prisons is to address the social, economic, and political conditions that cause crime, thus obviating the need for prisons. They acknowledge that the societal changes they seek are, to put it mildly, big ones, including the demolition of capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and militarism, plus a shift to a governance model where people take a shared responsibility for one another. These are not realistic goals that will be achieved any time soon, if ever, given the American political landscape. Is the pursuit of such ends nevertheless a positive development for criminal justice reform, or does it pose real risks to an agenda of massive decarceration and improvements in how criminal law operates in America?
For those who embrace abolition as an expressive reaction to what they view as the intolerable state of American punishment practices, the answer to that question may not matter. But others adopt an abolitionist stance precisely because they believe it is the most effective political strategy for bringing about change to American criminal justice practices. It is this latter goal of abolition that is the subject of this Article.
Specifically, this Article explores whether prison abolition as a movement will, on net, lead to more productive changes to criminal justice punishment practices or instead produce a backlash that hinders reform efforts. The most optimistic take is that the movement could improve the conversation around crime policy to include bolder initiatives that dislodge the central role of prisons and punishment and shift attention to root causes of harm. On this view, the abolitionist perspective can shift the Overton window to embrace much broader downsizing of prisons and investment in communities than would take place without the abolitionist challenge. Moreover, the call for abolition is just the kind of simple, powerful rhetorical move that draws people to embrace it and helps mobilize grassroots efforts for change.
There is, however, a future political path for abolition that is less rosy. Instead of helping the cause of decarceration and improving the lives of those under the control and supervision of the state’s punitive apparatus, there is the possibility that calls for abolition could lead to more harms than they prevent. This risk exists for two main reasons. First, because the rhetoric of abolition is absolutist—the language being used is deliberate and calls for an end to prisons—there is the risk that approach will frighten segments of the public who would otherwise support decarceration, even radical decarceration, but are not prepared to rule it out entirely. Politicians may take steps to avoid being associated with an abolitionist framing that is politically unpopular and resist reforms they would otherwise support. We have seen just such a dynamic with abolitionist calls to Defund the Police. Language and messaging matter in politics, and the abolition message may prove to be politically costly as mainstream public discussion becomes more aware of it. The danger is greater still if the idea of prison downsizing gets associated with broader abolitionist goals of ending capitalism and replacing it with communism or some other kind of communal governance structure that scares off too many would-be supporters of criminal justice reforms.
The second reason an abolitionist framing may ultimately produce more harm than good is that some who seek abolition often use that goal as the yardstick for deciding what policy changes to support. They reject what they call “reformist reforms” that do not contribute to dismantling the existing legal order. For example, many abolitionists reject calls to invest in improvements to prisons or put in place greater staffing, even if doing so would improve the lives of currently incarcerated people, on the view that this additional funding ultimately expands the role of prisons in society and leads to incarceration being more entrenched overall. Abolitionists have also rejected laws that would release certain groups of incarcerated people—such as those serving offenses that do not involve violence—because of a concern that those laws exclude others. The abolitionist framing therefore runs the risk of sacrificing too many reforms that would benefit people currently suffering from incarceration for a utopia that will ultimately not materialize.
In weighing the pros and cons of abolition as a political organizing strategy, then, a great deal turns on the likelihood of prisons being abolished. And on that score, the relatively recent history of another recent abolition movement—the movement to close state mental hospitals and provide community care to people with mental health needs, known as deinstitutionalization—strongly suggests that the more pessimistic take on the fate of prison abolition will ultimately prove correct. Deinstitutionalization is a cautionary tale with important lessons for today’s abolitionists and their political calculus.
It is an urgent question what strategy will best address the fact that prisons and jails in the United States are inhumane and dreadful. For those of us committed to drastic changes to patterns of policing, prosecution, and punishment that perpetuate structural inequality and fail to reduce harm, what is the best path forward to achieve those goals? Is the rhetoric and social organizing power of abolition beneficial because it will spark a successful political movement toward decarceration, or does it bring more political risks than benefits and will therefore ultimately harm the goal of weaning America off its reliance on prisons, jails, and other forms of detention?
This Article answers these questions by first describing the abolitionist movement in Part I. Part II considers the policy implications of an abolitionist framework. Part III then turns to the political calculation and analyzes the political pros and cons of an abolitionist stance. Drawing lessons from the Defund the Police movement and deinstitutionalization, it highlights where and why public resistance may emerge.
