Fay Honey Knopp wrote the book on abolishing prisons in 1976. The book, Instead of Prisons, begins,
It’s time to stop talking about reforming prisons and to start working for their complete abolition. That means basically three things:
First, admitting that prisons can’t be reformed, since the very nature of prisons requires brutality and contempt for the people imprisoned.
Second, recognizing that prisons are used mainly to punish poor and working class people, and forcing the courts to give equal justice to all citizens.
Third, replacing prisons with a variety of alternative programs. We must protect the public from the few really dangerous people who now go to prison. But more important, we must enable all convicted persons to escape the poverty which is the root cause of the crimes the average person fears most: crimes such as robbery, burglary, mugging or rape.
—Prison Research Project, The Price of Punishment, p. 57
Have things gotten any better inside since the Attica riots, since the Soledad brothers went on trial, since George Jackson died?
I’m curious – if she wants to abolish prisons then how do we protect ourselves against the truly sociopathic and/or psychopathic criminals?
The Delancey Street Foundation apparently has an amazing success rate:
http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/grassroots/delancey/
Which I first heard about in this Fast Company article “Change or Die”
http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2007/01/change-or-die.html
[he just released a new book of the same title that has more details about Delancey]
Key points: “in a dept. of justice study in 2024, they found that 30 percent of former inmates were rearrested within six months, and 67.5 percent of them were rearrested within three years. Most of the repeat offenders were felons. Psychologists and criminologists have come to share the belief that most criminals can’t change their lives. ”
and…
“After staying at Delancey for four years, most of the residents “graduate” and go out on their own into the greater society. Nearly 60 percent of the people who enter the program make it through and sustain productive lives on the outside. While the criminal justice system watches more than six out of ten convicts return to crime, Delancey turns nearly as many into lawful citizens. How, exactly? What’s the psychology behind transforming the most hopeless 1 percent of society, the ones who experts believe are incapable of change?”
The I’m-greatly-oversimplifying-here conclusion of Delancey (and the book) is that it’s about a specific combination of hope and practice.
[hate to say it Frank, but there’s a bit of half-glass-full in there, but with a twist you might like…]
Doug, the book’s online, linked above. Read the “Decarceration” chapter. They estimate that we have to protect ourselves from about ten percent of the inmates… that would mean I guess that there are maybe 2300 really evil fucks in Wisconsin who are in there and can’t be cut free. Maybe she’s wrong about the 10% maybe it is more like 50%, but there is a sameness to incarceration that grinds away the the humanity of the prisoner. Like the war, if we don’t encounter what’s wrong out there, we are complicit.
The book may be simplistic, grandiose in its intentions and short on a well mapped out implementation scheme, but what it does do is drive a stake in the ground regarding a truly ethical, humanitarian justice system.
Delancey Street is famous for its success, especially helping addicts to get off junk and get on with life. A “felon” who gets popped for a drug transaction, gets taken into the system, survives a year or more inside and then is released on parole will likely be back if she hasn’t addressed that fundamental issue of her addiction.
Junkies know that “jails, institutions, and death” are the only exits for the practicing addict. Delancey Street shows them other options to fill half that glass with while they’re digging out of the deviant junk culture.
There are other ways to do it too.