Prison Abolition Aff
Compiled by Lenny Brahin
June Choe
Tony Hackett
Jake Soria
DJ Williams
Read me
What is the Prison industrial complex (PIC)?
Stanley 2011 (Eric A., and Nat Smith. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial
Complex. Oakland, CA: AK, 2011, http://theloon2013.wikispaces.com/file/view/Stanley-Eric-CaptiveGenders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex.pdf, LB)
In the recent past, the term prison industrial complex has been offered to begin to name the enormity of the
prison system. Indeed, “the prison,” or the material buildings that comprise prisons and jails are only one component of
the PIC. Immigration centers, juvenile justice facilities, county jails, military jails, holding rooms, court
rooms, sheriff’s offices, psychiatric institutes, along with other spaces build the vastness of the PIC’s
architecture. Along with these more recognizable spaces, understanding the PIC as a set of relations makes visible the
connections among capitalism, globalization, and corporations. From prison labor, privatized prisons, prison guard
unions, food suppliers, telephone companies, commissary suppliers, uniform producers, and beyond, the
carceral landscape overwhelms. Other than the facilities themselves and the economic and geopolitical
connections, the PIC also helps us to think about the practices of surveillance, policing, screening,
profiling, and other technologies to partition people and produce “populations” that often occur far
beyond the walls of the prison.8
How does the PIC affect trans/queer bodies
Stanley 2011 (Eric A., and Nat Smith. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial
Complex. Oakland, CA: AK, 2011, http://theloon2013.wikispaces.com/file/view/Stanley-Eric-CaptiveGenders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex.pdf, LB)
This book suggests that anti-trans/queer violence and the reproduction of gender normativity are important
ways in which PIC logics proliferate, dangerously unnamed . Gender normativity, understood as a series of cultural,
political, legal, and religious assumptions that attempt to divide our bodies into two categories (men/women), is both a product of
and a producer of the PIC. In this we mean to suggest that we must pay attention to the ways that the PIC harms trans/gender-nonconforming and queer people and also to how the PIC produces the gender binary and heteronormativity itself. We also
acknowledge that trans/queer folks, especially those of color and/or low income, experience
overwhelming amounts of personal violence that must be attended to. Here we are not attempting to
discredit the severity of this personal violence, but we are suggesting that relying on the PIC as a remedy
actually produces more harm and offers little. What, then, might a world look like in which harm is met
with healing and support, rather than the displacement and reviolation produced by the PIC?9
Why is it bad
Herzing 2005 (Rachel, activist from the US with almost 20 years of organising experience, came to the
forum and gave a talk about the work and politics of two US prison abolitionist organisations "Defending
Justice - What Is The Prison Industrial Complex?" N.p., 2005. Web. 17 July 2015.
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/overview/herzing_pic.html, LB)
The United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world, both in raw numbers and
in the percentage of people locked up per capita. The number of people locked up in this country has also skyrocketed in
recent years. The over 2,000,000 people the United States currently imprisons is over 4 timesthe number of
prisoners in 1980. During that same period, the rate of increase in women prisoners has been particularly staggering-the
number of women in U.S. prisons has tripled since 1980.19 Of all U.S. prisoners, about 67% are people of color, although
people of color make up only about 30% of the U.S. population . This is not because more people of color commit
crimes. As we have seen, it is because at its foundations, the prison industrial complex is a racist system that targets people of color.
For instance, White people are less likely than people of color to be arrested, less likely to be charged with a
crime, and less likely to serve time if they are found guilty. Additionally, in 2000, White people in the
United States were imprisoned at a rate of 235 people per every 100,000 in the population, compared to
1043 people of color per every 100,000 in the population.20 Despite the fact that prisons are incredibly detrimental
both to the communities from which prisoners come and the communities in which prisons are located, they continue to be pawned
off on poor communities as economic miracles. Public officials often portray prisons as "clean industries" and
promise hundreds of good jobs to economically desperate towns. Often sited the way polluting industries
are, prison building also targets the poor and communities of color,21but neither lifts towns out of
poverty. Prisons destroy the environment by using large quantities of local natural resources. The towns
where prisons are located are required to pay for the roads, sewers, and utilities that service prisons.
Often prison construction takes land out of productive use. Furthermore, despite the promise of jobs, the
bulk of prison jobs do not go to residents of the host towns, and employees of the prisons rarely move
there after being hired. Because the vast majority of prison employees end up commuting, the host towns'
local businesses see little, if any, of the prison employees' money.22
Examples of resistances within prisons
Ware 2011 (Wesley. Captive Genders: rounding up the homosexuals: the impact of the juvenile court on
queer and trans/gender non conforming youth. Oakland, CA: AK, 2011,
http://theloon2013.wikispaces.com/file/view/Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-andPrison-Industrial-Complex.pdf, LB)
Perhaps the most resilient of all youth in prison in Louisiana, incarcerated queer and trans youth have
documented their grievances, over and over again, keeping impeccable paper trails of abuse and
discrimination for their lawyers and advocates. When confronted by the guards who waged wars against them, one selfidentified gay youth let it be known, “You messin’ with the wrong punk.” Although prohibited from even speaking
publicly with other queer youth in prison, queer and trans youth have formed community across three
youth prisons in the state, whispered through fences, and passed messages through sympathetic staff . They
have made matching bracelets and necklaces for one another, gotten each other’s initials tattooed on their
bodies, and written letters to each other’s mothers. They have supported each other by alerting advocates when one of
them was on lockdown or in trouble and unable to call. Trans-feminine youth have gone to lockdown instead of
cutting their hair and used their bed sheets to design curtains for their cells once they got there. They have
smuggled in Kool-Aid to dye their hair, secretly shaved their legs, colored their fingernails with markers, and used crayons for eye
shadow. When a lawyer asked her trans-masculine client to dress more “feminine” for court, knowing that
the judge was increasingly hostile toward gender-non-conforming youth, her client drew the line at the
skirt, fearlessly and proudly demanding that she receive her sentence in baggy pants instead. Queer and
trans/gender-non-conforming youth have made us question the very purpose of the juvenile justice system and holding them behind
bars in jails and prisons made for kids. By listening to their voices it becomes apparent that until we dismantle
state systems designed to criminalize and police young people and variant expressions of gender and
sexuality, none of us will be free. And to my younger client recently released from a youth prison, yes, the
world is more beautiful now. Welcome home.
1ac
1ac trans final
The war on drugs created the deadliest form of the prison industrial complex – from its
conceptions, transgender people and persons of color have been unfairly locked up and
forced in climate that directly violated any conception of human rights
Rivera 2007 (Sylvia, it’s a war in here: a report on the treatment of transgender and intersex people in
new yorks mens state prison, Sylvia rivera law project, http://srlp.org/files/warinhere.pdf, LB)
Concurrent with the expansion of prison populations, funding, and construction, the U.S. has also
intensified its use of policing and surveillance since the early 1980s Policing and law enforcement are
disproportionately concentrated in lowincome communities, communities of color, and poor urban areas,
forcing these communities to bear the brunt of increased police presence and “law and order” agendas.
This practice has been consistent throughout the past few decades, but has been exacerbated by the
federal government’s “War on Drugs” and its current “War on Terror,” which have driven the rates of arrest,
detention, and deportation of people of color, homeless people, undocumented residents, and low-income
people to unparalleled heights.22 Intensified police brutality and profiling and the erosion of many vital
social services and public benefits have produced a national climate in which people from racially and
economically marginalized communities are more likely than ever to be arrested and sent to prison. As
discussed in the next section, the increasing imprisonment of low-income people, people of color, and women
has occurred in conjunction with the disproportionate arrest and imprisonment of transgender and
gender non-conforming people, and has led to a particularly high risk of imprisonment for people who
live at the intersections of more than one of these experiences. In the current era of correctional expansion, we have
also seen a simultaneous intensification of human and civil rights abuses inside U.S. prisons, jails, and detention centers.23
Pervasive sexual assault—at the hands of both correctional officers and other prisoners—has been
documented as endemic and routine throughout U.S. correctional facilities, particularly in women’s
prisons. Egregious medical and mental health neglect and mistreatment of prisoners are also extensively
documented.25 Inadequate HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) prevention and treatment, insufficient primary
medical care and mental health treatment, among other violations of prisoners’ rights, are prevalent .26 The
consistent use of isolation and solitary confinement as punitive measures and the resulting devastating
psychological impacts have also been documented.27 Racial segregation and pervasive racist harassment
and abuse from correctional officials further compound the institutionalized discrimination within
correctional facilities.28 The range of such human rights violations in U.S. federal, state, and
local custody inevitably produces a climate that can hardly be characterized as
“rehabilitative.” It is in this already neglectful, abusive, and discriminatory environment that the
experiences of transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex people in prison must be understood.
Transgender bodies are placed in a panopticon by civil society – this surveillance is
all pervasive and demands absolute knowledge of who these people and a desire to
‘restore them to the way they should be’ – instead of allowing this vicious
imposition of security to continue, you should affirm an abolitionist approach to
the prison industrial complex
Stanley 2011 (Eric A., and Nat Smith. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial
Complex. Oakland, CA: AK, 2011, http://theloon2013.wikispaces.com/file/view/Stanley-Eric-CaptiveGenders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex.pdf, LB)
Trans/gender-non-conforming and queer people, along with many others, are born into webs of
surveillance. The gendering scan of other children at an early age (“Are you a boy or a girl?”) places many in the
panopticon long before they enter a prison. For those who do trespass the gender binary or
heteronormativity, physical violence, isolation, detention, or parental disappointment become some of the
first punishments. As has been well documented, many trans and queer youth are routinely harassed at school
and kicked out of home at young ages, while others leave in hopes of escaping the mental and physical
violence that they experience at schools and in their houses. Many trans/queer youth learn how to survive in a hostile
world. Often the informal economy becomes the only option for them to make money. Selling drugs, sex work, shoplifting,
and scamming are among the few avenues that might ensure they have something to eat and a place to
sleep at night. Routinely turned away from shelters because of their gender presentation, abused in residential living situations or
foster care, and even harassed in “gay neighborhoods” (as they are assumed to drive down property values or scare off business),
they are reminded that they are alone. Habitually picked up for truancy, loitering, or soliciting, many trans/queer
people spend their youth shuttling between the anonymity of the streets and the hyper-surveillance of the
juvenile justice system. With case managers too overloaded to care, or too transphobic to want to care, they slip through the
holes left by others. Picked up—locked up—placed in a home—escape—survive—picked up again. The cycle builds a cage, and the
hope for anything else disappears with the crushing reality that their identities form the parameters of possibility.10 With few
options and aging-out of what little resources there are for “youth,” many trans/queer adults are in no better a situation.
Employers routinely don’t hire “queeny” gay men, trans women who “cannot pass,” butches who seem
“too hard,” or anyone else who is read to be “bad for business.” Along with the barriers to employment, most jobs
that are open to folks who have been homeless or incarcerated are minimum-wage and thus provide little more than continuing
poverty and fleeting stability. Back to where they began—on the streets, hustling to make it, now older—they are
often given even longer sentences. While this cycle of poverty and incarceration speaks to more current
experiences, the discursive drives building their motors are nothing new. Inheriting a long history of being
made suspect, trans/queer people, via the medicalization of trans identities and homosexuality, have been
and continue to be institutionalized, forcibly medicated, sterilized, operated on, shocked, and made into
objects of study and experimentation. Similarly, the historical illegality of gender trespassing and of queerness have taught
many trans/queer folks that their lives will be intimately bound with the legal system. More recently, the HIV/AIDS
pandemic has turned the surveillance technologies inward. One’s blood and RNA replication became
another site of susceptibility that continues to imprison people through charges of bio-terrorism, under
AIDS-phobic laws. Living through these forms of domination are also moments of devastating resistance
where people working together are building joy, tearing down the walls of normative culture, and opening
space for a more beautiful, more lively, safer place for all. Captive Genders remembers these radical histories and
movements as evidence that our legacies are fiercely imaginative and that our collective abilities can, and have, offered freedom even
in the most destitute of times.11 In the face of the overwhelming violence of the PIC, abolition—and specifically a
trans/queer abolition—is one example of this vital defiance. An abolitionist politic does not believe that
the prison system is “broken” and in need of reform; indeed, it is, according to its own logic, working quite
well. Abolition necessarily moves us away from attempting to “fix” the PIC and helps us imagine an
entirely different world—one that is not built upon the historical and contemporary legacies of the racial
and gendered brutality that maintain the power of the PIC. What this means is that abolition is not a response
to the belief that the PIC is so horrible that reform would not be enough. Although we do believe that the PIC is
horrible and that reform is not enough, abolition radically restages our conversations and our ways of living and
understanding as to undo our reliance on the PIC and its cultural logics. For us, abolition is not simply a
reaction to the PIC but a political commitment that makes the PIC impossible. To this end, the time of abolition
is both yet to come and already here. In other words, while we hold on to abolition as a politics for doing anti-PIC work, we also
acknowledge there are countless ways that abolition has been and continues to be here now. As a project
dedicated to radical deconstruction, abolition must also include at its center a reworking of gender and
sexuality that displaces both heterosexuality and gender normativity as measures of worth.12
Violence against trans people begins at a young age– civil society’s desire to ‘cure’
and ‘rehabilitate’ children from their non conformist way of life is part of a larger
system which silences any position which attempts to speak out against
institutional violence
Ware 2011 (Wesley. Captive Genders: rounding up the homosexuals: the impact of the juvenile court on
queer and trans/gender non conforming youth. Oakland, CA: AK, 2011,
http://theloon2013.wikispaces.com/file/view/Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-andPrison-Industrial-Complex.pdf, LB)
While not as explicit as the sumptuary laws (laws requiring people to wear at least three items of gender-appropriate clothing) or
sodomy laws of the past that led to the Compton’s Riots and Stonewall Rebellion, the policing of sexuality and state
regulation of gender has continued to exist in practice—perhaps nowhere more than in juvenile courts. In
many ways, the system still mirrors the adult criminal justice system, whose roots can be traced to slavery,
the commodification of bodies as free labor, institutionalized racism, and state regulation of low-income
people of color, immigrants, and anyone deemed otherwise “deviant” or a threat to the political norm .
Combined with the Puritan beliefs that helped spark the creation of juvenile courts, it becomes clear that, borrowing the words of
Audre Lorde, queer and trans youth of color “were never meant to survive .” In fact, one youth in a Louisiana youth
prison responded to the number of queer and trans youth incarcerated by stating, “I’m afraid they’re rounding up the
homosexuals.” Once locked up, queer and trans youth experience the same horrors that their adult
counterparts in the system do, but magnified by a system designed to control, regulate, and pathologize
their very existence. In Louisiana’s youth prisons, queer and trans youth have been subjected to “sexual-identity confusion
counseling,” accused of using “gender identity issues” to detract from their rehabilitation, and disciplined for expressing any gendernon-conforming behaviors or actions. Youth are put on lockdown for having hair that is too long or wearing state-
issued clothing that is too tight. They are instructed how to walk, talk, and act in their dorms and are
prohibited from communicating with other queer youth lest they become too “flamboyant” and cause a
disturbance. They are excessively punished for consensual same-sex behavior and spend much of their
time in protective custody or in isolation cells. In meetings with representatives from the Juvenile Justice Project of
Louisiana, directors of youth jails have referred to non-heterosexual identities as “symptoms” and have
conflated youth adjudicated for sex offenses with youth who are queer . In addition, when advocates asked what the
biggest problem was at a youth prison in Baker, Louisiana, guards replied, “the lesbians.” Even more troubling, unlike the adult
criminal justice system where individuals either “ride out their time” or work toward “good time” or parole, youths’ privileges in
prison and eventual release dates are often determined by their successful completion of their rehabilitative programming, including
relationships with peers and staff. Thus, youth who are seen as “deviant” or “mentally ill,” or who otherwise do not
conform to the rules set forth by the prison, often spend longer amounts of time incarcerated and are
denied their opportunity for early release. For queer and trans/ gender-non-conforming youth, this means longer
prison terms. In fact, in the last four years of advocacy on behalf of queer and trans youth in prison in
Louisiana at the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, not one openly queer or trans youth has been recommended for
an early release by the Office of Juvenile Justice While protections afforded to youth in the juvenile justice system like a greater right
to confidentiality are extremely important for youth, they can also be another strike against queer and trans youth seeking to access
resources or support networks while inside. Like queer and trans adults in the criminal justice system who have difficulty receiving
information that “promotes homosexuality,” youth are unable to access affirming information during a particularly formative time in
their lives, which can already be plagued with confusion and questioning. The right to confidentiality for youth in prison
can result in their being prohibited from communicating with pen pals or seeking services from
community organizations. Other rights are afforded to adults but not to minors, such as accessing legal counsel to challenge
the conditions of their confinement. Youth under 18 must rely on their guardians to assist with filing a civil complaint, despite the
fact that many queer and trans youth have had difficulty with their families prior to their incarceration—and that those family
members may have contributed to their entering into the system in the first place. This barrier also holds true for transgender youth
who are minors and seeking healthcare or hormones. These youth may need the approval from a guardian or judge in
order to access these services—or approval from a guardian in order to file a civil complaint to request
them. Meanwhile, as state institutions are placing queer and trans/gendernon-conforming youth behind
bars and effectively silencing their voices, prominent gay activists are fighting for inclusion in the very
systems that criminalize youth of color (such as increased sentencing for hate crimes) under the banner of
“we’re just like everybody else.” A far stray from the radicalism of the early gay rights movement, mainstream “gay issues”
have become focused on the right to marry and “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies in the military, despite the fact that queer youth of
color have consistently ranked these at the bottom of their list of priorities of issues that impact their lives.10 Likewise, the public
“face of gay” as white, middle-class men has become a further detriment to queer and trans youth in
prison, particularly in the South where queer youth of color are often not “out,” and individuals, like in all
areas of the country, have difficulty discussing the two issues at the center: race and sexuality .11 As a result of
the invisibility of so many incarcerated queer and trans youth, especially youth of color, juvenile justice stakeholders in the
South often mistake queer and trans youth to be white, vulnerable youth usually charged with a sex
offense, if they acknowledge them at all. As a result, they assume that any concern for these youth to be
coming from white advocates who believe that queer and trans youth have been funneled into a system
made for “poor black children;” in other words, into a system that is “OK for some children, but not for
others.” We must be clear about why we do this work—it is not because some children belong locked away at night and others do
not—it is because no child should be behind bars. Further, the data tells us that queer and trans youth in detention are
equally distributed across race and ethnicity, and comprise 15 percent of youth in detention centers. So far, the data has been
consistent among youth in different regions in the United States, including the rural South.12 Since queer and trans youth
are overrepresented in nearly all popular feeders into the juvenile justice system—homelessness, difficulty
in school, substance abuse, and difficulty with mental health13—the same societal ills, which
disproportionately affect youth of color—it should not be surprising that they may be overrepresented in
youth prisons and jails as well. Since incarcerated youth have so few opportunities to speak out, it is critically
important for individuals and organizations doing this work to keep a political analysis of the failings of
the system at the forefront of the work—particularly the inherent racial disparities in the system—while
highlighting the voices of those youth who are most affected and providing vehicles through which they
can share their stories.
This desubjectification of life can only ever be classified as genocide – there is a
gendered cleansing taking part across the nation which can’t be changed absent a
change in policy
kidd & witten 2008 (jeremy d. department of geronotology, Virginia university, tarynn M., phd school
of social work, Virginia common wealth/executive director, 6/3/08, transgender and transsexual
identities: the next strange fruit – hate crimes, violence, and genocide against the global transcommunities”, LB)
As mentioned earlier, the treatment of the transgender population with respect to violence and abuse, both in
the U.S. and globally, should be viewed through the lens of the United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1951), specifically Article 2, Sections A-C. Article 2, in its
entirety, explains: Article 2 In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: • (a) Killing members of the group; • (b) Causing serious
bodily or mental harm to members of the group; • (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part; • (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; • (e) Forcibly
transferring children of the group to another group While the United Nations resolution does not specifically include
groups of people defined by either sexual orientation or gender identity, the hypothetical inclusion of
these two terms would have profound implications for a conceptualization of anti-transgender violence as
genocide under Article 2. It should be noted that any one of the actions specified in Article 2, alone or in combination with other
items in the list, is considered sufficient for classifying a situation as “genocide.” Upon inspection, the material existences of
transgender people as described throughout this article bear tremendous resemblance to the acts outlined in the Genocide
Convention. (More evidence of this can be found in the reference section at the end of this article.) For instance, it has been
demonstrated that transgender people are being targeted for violence and murder based solely on their
transgression of traditional gender norms. This is exemplified most profoundly in the aforementioned statesponsored “sexual cleansing” of transgender metis taking place in Nepal (Human Rights Watch, 2006).
Additionally, this article has sought to demonstrate that even in the U.S., acts of anti-transgender violence are not
isolated incidents of random violence, but instead share the common impetus of the perpetrators’ desiring
to eradicate a group of people who violate a widely held and popularly reinforced norm of binary gender
with a connection to heteronormative sexuality. The net effect of these crimes is to evoke a sense of fear
that percolates throughout the transgender community, encouraging transgender people to renounce
open expressions of their gender identity lest they face similar violence. Additionally, it is posited that the common
motive of eradication/annihilation is also transmitted socio-culturally to other potential perpetrators through media and film
representations of anti-transgender violence, which potentiates the fear of victimization described by transgender people, including
those quoted in this article. In summation, this “killing” and “serious bodily or mental harm” certainly satisfies the conditions set
forth in Article 2, Sections A and B of the Genocide Convention. As if this were not enough to classify anti-transgender violence as
genocide, it has also been presented that transgender people are targeted for employment, housing, and
healthcare discrimination. In addition, transgender people experience severe violence and abuse across
social institutions such as the legal system, the penal system, and the military . This constellation of
systemic oppressions makes it nearly impossible for transgender people to attain basic life necessities
while asserting a transgender gender identity. Article 2, Section C of the Genocide Convention allows for the possibility
that acts of genocide may adopt a form other than physical violence and killing. Such “conditions of life” that might bring
about transgender people’s “destruction in whole or in part” would certainly include the denial of vital
services and resources based on their identification as transgender. Complicating matters is that while thirteen U.S.
states and the District of Columbia have employment nondiscrimination laws that include transgender people, there is currently
no federal law prohibiting any type of antitransgender discrimination (Transgender Law and Policy Institute,
2006). Consequently, transgender people are left with no explicit method of legal recourse following such
abuses. This puts openly transgender people in the precarious position of either living openly as
transgender or facing the very real possibility of being unemployed, homeless, and unable to access
healthcare. These dire conditions have been shown to increase the risk of a transgender person’s experiencing violence (Lombardi
et al., 2001) and have been demonstrated to increase the risk of higher mortality and morbidity among later-life trans-persons
(Witten, 2007abc). In this way, a cycle of systemic discrimination and violence characterizes the lives of many
transgender people. Of course, one must acknowledge the complexities which arise out of the restriction of the Genocide
Convention to “a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group” (1951, Article 2). Each of these group signifiers (with the possible
exception of religion) contains an extrinsic component of construction and application. For example, in the late 20th-century
Rwandan genocide, it was the Rwandan government, through the issuing of identification documents, that determined who was
Hutu or Tutsi for the purposes of extermination. The tension between the two groups was, of course, predicated on a racial hierarchy
established years earlier by colonial powers (Destexhe & Daley, 1995). Similarly, the genocide committed against Native
Americans in colonial America as described by Howard Zinn (2005) depended upon the colonists’ ability
to “other” and label the indigenous people as “Indians.” If the determination of group membership used in the
commission of genocide were universally perceived, constructed, and applied externally, the current Genocide Convention would be
sufficient. However, sexual and gender identity do not operate via this extrinsic labeling. Individuals are not
labeled by dominant culture as transgender (or, for that matter, as gay, lesbian or bisexual) against their will. In fact,
there exists in society a “compulsory heterosexuality” (Rich, 1994) and an endemic re/enforcement of “heteronormativity”
(Warner, 1993) that seeks to discourage even the mere acknowledgment of transgressive sexual and
gender identities. Instead of being labeled “transgender” by the dominant culture, transgender people must actively
assert their gender identity in order to self-identify as such. While it is clear that perpetrators of antitransgender
violence choose their victims based on a perceived violation of the binary gender norm (the very definition of “transgender”), it is not
clear that these same perpetrators fully understand their victims to be “transgender,” as such. This difference from the
mechanics of traditionally-conceived genocide indicates the need for a reexamination of how we define
genocide. Given the breadth of discrimination, abuse, violence, and hate crimes, and the clear-cut absence
of policy designed to regulate it, it is within reason to conclude that absence of policy is, in fact, policy. As
one of the TLAR survey respondents stated: Condoned social institutions that foster hate and intolerance should be looked at. They
cause as much psychological damage as anything. Prevailing attitudes by society need to be changed so that all
people can fit in without fear of violence, loss of job/family etc. There is room enough for everybody to live
peaceable lives as they see fit.
Thus the plan: The United States federal government should abolish its domestic prisons.
The prison industrial complex should come first – the imperial nature of the PIC
functions as an impact magnifier for any eruption of violence
David 8 (gilbert, “A SYSTEM WITH IN THE SYSTEM: THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COM PLEX AND
IMPERIALISM,” Abolition Now! Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial
Complex, ed. CR-10 Publications Collective, 2008, LB)
"Imperialism" may sound like the kind of rhetoric we want to avoid, but it's one word that needs to be
rescued as the best way to name the system that rules over us. The basis of imperialism is the relentless
quest for profits around the globe. Its most striking characteristic is the colossal and grotesque polarization of wealth. That
polarization happens between nations, between the rich countries of the North and the impoverished ones of the global South, the
impoverished countries of Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia; and at the same time within each country based on class, race
and gender. The poles of dazzling wealth and abject poverty are intimately linked, as the former results from
the ruthless plunder of the latter. This system is built on and intensifies all the major forms of oppression:
patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, all of which are structurally central. At the same time,
"imperialism" highlights the global character of the system in a way that explains why the most intense
oppression and resistance have been in the South and that also provides the context for why the liberation
struggles of the various peoples of color have been in the forefront within the US. There is no way to
capture what this system costs in human life and potential, the pain and the loss for all of us. Close to one
billion human beings suffer chronic hunger, while another two billion face nutritional deficiencies; one
billion lack access to clean drinking water. Just looking at children under the age of five, imperialism is a
holocaust in progress: over 9 million die each year from easily preventable causes associated with poverty.
The price for future generations may be even more severe as the rapaciousness of this global frenzy for
profits threatens the very ecological basis for sustaining human life of any scale. Since most people won't
accept living in squalor amid plenty, imperialism entails both the most sophisticated and the most brutal
forms of social control. Its most salient feature is war, war after war after war, mainly against the peoples
of the South. The domestic front-line of such repression is a truly violent and harmful prison industrial
complex.
We don’t have to win absolute solvency – the act of imagining hope for a better future
breaks out of cycles of transphobia which is the first step to a less exclusionary world order
Spade et al 2011 (Dean, Captive Genders: BUILDING AN ABOLITIONIST TRANS AND QUEER
MOVEMENT WITH EVERYTHING WE’VE GOT. Oakland, CA: AK, 2011,
http://theloon2013.wikispaces.com/file/view/Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-andPrison-Industrial-Complex.pdf, LB)
This stuff is heavy, we realize. Our communities and our movements are up against tremendous odds and
have inherited a great deal of trauma that we are still struggling to deal with. A common and reasonable response
to these conditions is getting overwhelmed, feeling defeated, losing hope. In this kind of emotional and political climate, when
activists call for deep change like prison abolition (or, gasp, an LGBT agenda centered around prison
abolition), our demands get called “impossible” or “idealistic” or even “divisive. ” As trans people, we’ve been
hearing this for ages. After all, according to our legal system, the media, science, and many of our families and
religions, we [trans people] shouldn’t exist! Our ways of living and expressing ourselves break such fundamental rules
that systems crash at our feet, close their doors to us, and attempt to wipe us out. And yet we exist, continuing to build and sustain
new ways of looking at gender, bodies, family, desire, resistance, and happiness that nourish us and challenge expectations. In an
age when thousands of people are murdered annually in the name of “democracy,” millions of people are
locked up to “protect public safety,” and LGBT organizations march hand in hand with cops in Pride
parades, being impossible may just be the best thing we’ve got going for ourselves: Impossibility may very
well be our only possibility. What would it mean to embrace, rather than shy away from, the impossibility
of our ways of living as well as our political visions? What would it mean to desire a future that we can’t
even imagine but that we are told couldn’t ever exist? We see the abolition of policing, prisons, jails, and
detention not strictly as a narrow answer to “imprisonment” and the abuses that occur within prisons, but
also as a challenge to the rule of poverty, violence, racism, alienation, and disconnection that we face
every day. Abolition is not just about closing the doors to violent institutions, but also about building up and recovering
institutions and practices and relationships that nurture wholeness, self-determination, and transformation. Abolition is not
some distant future but something we create in every moment when we say no to the traps of empire and
yes to the nourishing possibilities dreamed of and practiced by our ancestors and friends . Every time we insist
on accessible and affirming healthcare, safe and quality education, meaningful and secure employment, loving and healing
relationships, and being our full and whole selves, we are doing abolition. Abolition is about breaking down things that
oppress and building up things that nourish. Abolition is the practice of transformation in the here and
now and the ever after. Maybe wrestling with such a significant demand is the wake-up call that an
increasingly sleepy LGBT movement needs. The true potential of queer and trans politics cannot be found
in attempting to reinforce our tenuous right to exist by undermining someone else’s. If it is not clear
already, we are all in this together. To claim our legacy of beautiful impossibility is to begin practicing ways of being with
one another and making movement that sustain all life on this planet, without exception. It is to begin speaking what we have not yet
had the words to wish for.
Alternatives to prisons exist in the status quo – a strategy of everyday abolition
means recentering our pedagogy around struggles for self determination
Lamble 11 (S., Professor at the University of London, Birkbeck College of Law TRANSFORMING
CARCERAL LOGICS: 10 Reasons to Dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex Through Queer/Trans
Analysis and Action," from Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, LB)
Develop effective alternatives. Dismantling the prison industrial complex is impossible without
developing alternative community protocols for addressing violence and harm. Creating abolitionist alternatives
means encouraging non-punitive responses to harm, enacting community-based mechanisms of social accountability, and
prioritizing prevention. Such alternatives include restorative/ transformative justice initiatives,
community-based restitution projects, social and economic support networks, affordable
housing, community education projects, youth-led recreational programs, free accessible
healthcare services, empowerment-based mental health, addiction and harm reduction
programs, quality employment opportunities, anti-poverty measures, and support for selfdetermination struggles.101 • Practice everyday abolition. Prison abolition is not simply an
end goal but also an everyday practice. Being abolitionist is about changing the ways we interact with
others on an ongoing basis and changing harmful patterns in our daily lives. Abolitionist practice mean
questioning punitive impulses in our intimate relationships, rethinking the ways that we deal with
personal conflicts, and reducing harms that occur in our homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools.
In this way, “living abolition” is part of the daily practice of creating a world without cages.
Our strategy is not reformism, nor is it a call for fixing a broken system but a total
destruction of prison society
Herzing 2005 (Rachel, activist from the US with almost 20 years of organising experience, came to the
forum and gave a talk about the work and politics of two US prison abolitionist organisations "Defending
Justice - What Is The Prison Industrial Complex?" N.p., 2005. Web. 17 July 2015.
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/overview/herzing_pic.html, LB)
The U.S. prison industrial complex is not a broken system in need of repair. It is a system that works. Over
the course of its development, it has actually become even more effective in its purpose-controlling and
disappearing those people who present the greatest potential challenges to the U.S. power structure. By
saying that I do not mean to say that mistakes are never made in policing, the courts or imprisonment. Many mistakes are made
each day. What I do mean is that if we truly desire social justice, we must not fight to improve this killing
machine. We must eliminate it. Taking steps toward creating a world not controlled by the prison
industrial complex will entail a substantial shift in our common sense understandings about what makes
us safe and secure. While acknowledging the very real harms that are done to people each day, we must push ourselves to
broaden our options in responding to those harms. Creating a wider spectrum for economic and political
participation; making affordable, quality housing for everyone a priority; or understanding substance use
as a health issue can help us challenge some of the assumptions on which the prison industrial complex is
based. Many people would like to see quick, easy solutions to our current crisis. Starving the prison industrial complex of
its power and material resources will require much more than a quick fix, however. It will mean trying to
resolve conflicts without involving the cops, or opening our own homes as safe havens for our friends and family members in need,
or creating job and housing opportunities for people coming home from jails and prisons rather than shutting doors to them, or
making it economically impossible for corporations to invest in prison construction or labor. Unfortunately there is no single
answer that meets the needs of all our communities. What seems certain is that we need to begin to believe that a world
beyond surveillance, policing and imprisonment is possible and turn those beliefs into reality. The reforms for which many
have worked so tirelessly have not lessened the negative impacts of the prison industrial complex. In fact,
many reforms have only made the prison industrial complex stronger and more durable .23
Refuse any ideology that demands the continuation of the prison system – white
supremacy creates laws to capture any form of alterity that exists in our perfect
world, working on helping people at an individual level is more beneficial for those
encaged now
Davis 2003 (Angela Y professor of history of consciousness at the University of California, Are Prisons
Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories, 2003, http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wpcontent/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf, LB)
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 imprisonmentdemilitarization 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. The creation of new institutions that lay claim to the space now occupied by the prison can
eventually start to crowd out the prison so that it would inhabit increasingly smaller areas of our social and psychic landscape.
Schools can therefore be seen as the most powerful alternative to jails and prisons. Unless the current structures of
violence are eliminated from schools in impoverished comrmmities of color-including the presence of
armed security guards and police-and unless schools become places that encourage the joy of learning,
these schools will remain the major conduits to prisons. The alternative would be to transform schools into
vehicles for decarceration. Within the health care system, it is important to emphasize the current scarcity
of institutions available to poor people who suffer severe mental and emotional illnesses . There are currently
more people with mental and emotional disorders in jails and prisons than in mental institutions. This call for new facilities
designed to assist poor people should not be taken as an appeal to reinstitute the old system of mental
institutions, which wereand in many cases still are-as repressive as the prisons. It is simply to suggest that the
racial and class disparities in care available to the affluent and the deprived need to be eradicated, thus creating another vehicle for
decarceration. To reiterate, rather than try to imagine one single alternative to the existing system of incarceration, we might
envision an array of alternatives that will require radical transformations of many aspects of our society. Alternatives that fail
to address racism, male dominance, homophobia, class bias, and other structures of domination will not,
in the final analysis, lead to decarceration and will not advance the goal of abolition. It is within this context
that it makes sense to consider the decriminalization of drug use as a significant component of a larger strategy to simultaneously
oppose structures of racism within the criminal justice system and further the abolitionist agenda of decarceration. Thus, with
respect to the project of challenging the role played by the so-called War on Drugs in bringing huge
numbers of people of color into the prison system, proposals to decriminalize drug use should be linked to
the development of a constellation of free, community-based programs accessible to all people who wish
to tackle their drug problems. This is not to suggest that all people who use drugs-or that only people who use illicit 'drugs—
need such help. However, anyone, regardless of economic status, who wishes to conquer drug addiction should
be able to enter treatment programs.
1ac blackness final
The united states surveillance system has tied itself to the prison industrial
complex – the monitoring and tracking of vulnerable populations are used to
target bodies who we deem criminals in the eyes of the law – this process is a
violent form of racialization which recreates the problems it tries to solve
Herzing 2005 (Rachel, activist from the US with almost 20 years of organising experience, came to the
forum and gave a talk about the work and politics of two US prison abolitionist organisations "Defending
Justice - What Is The Prison Industrial Complex?" N.p., 2005. Web. 17 July 2015.
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/overview/herzing_pic.html, LB)
Surveillance, or the close observation of an individual or group under suspicion, is one of the primary
tactics of the prison industrial complex. Physical and electronic monitoring, including video, audio, mail
and e-mail surveillance is used to keep track of people's communications and physical actions. Used in some
cases as a scare tactic, particularly in the case of political dissidents, the threat of surveillance is sometimes employed to encourage
people to censor their statements and actions. One of the most common forms of surveillance is the use of
informants to gain access to groups being surveilled. They build relationships with people for the express
purpose of securing information about (and sometimes disrupting the activities of) those under
suspicion.10 Groups of people who are exposed to public scrutiny by virtue of their lack of access to
individualized private spaces (e.g. homeless people, street vendors, and young people) are particularly vulnerable to
surveillance by police and business owners, and are often targeted by law enforcement .11 Immigrants have
long been the subjects of surveillance and suspicion in the US at borders and immigration stations, through contact with the INS,
and through their employers, for instance.12 The expanding use of neighborhood watch programs and community
policing also falls under the area of surveillance, as community members are encouraged by local police
forces to watch their neighbors with suspicion and report any unusual activities to law enforcement. 13 And
since September 11, 2001, law enforcement's use of surveillance has grown substantially, particularly under the protection of the
USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct
Terrorism Act) passed in October 2001. Surveillance is vital to the prison industrial complex in targeting specific individuals and
groups of people and legitimating the criminalization and punishment tactics employed against them. Surveillance,
particularly electronic surveillance is also touted as an effective "crime fighting" tool. In fact, no
relationship has been established between use of surveillance and lowered crime rates. The use of
surveillance as a tool of law enforcement highlights the unequal distributions of power and wealth upon
which the prison industrial complex is based. Who gets watched, who is understood as suspicious, and
who gets swept into the prison industrial complex as a result of that watching all contribute to the fear
that is so crucial to legitimating the centrality of the prison industrial complex in "solving" the problems
generated by these inequities.
This is especially true for the war on drugs –there is some truth to this statement –
there is certainly a war going on but it is not against some inanimate object called
drugs – modern day civil society has constructed a war on communities of color –
non white populations are arbitrarily discriminated against and forced behind
bars
Gupta 2011 (vanita, Director – ACLU Center for Justice, The 40-Year War on Drugs: It's Not Fair, and
It's Not Working, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/01/981200/-The-40-Year-War-on-Drugs-Its-Not-Fair-and-It-s-Not-Working, LB)
The war on drugs has been a war on communities of color. The racial disparities are staggering: despite the
fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are
incarcerated for drug offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites . In 2001, I represented dozens
of African-Americans who were charged and convicted of bogus, very low-level cocaine offenses in a small Texas town called Tulia.
The only evidence against them was the uncorroborated testimony of one corrupt law enforcement officer,
Tom Coleman. That didn't stop my clients from receiving sentences of 20, 40, 60 and even 90 years. While the ending was ultimately
a happy one, my clients spent four years in prison for crimes they did not commit while we worked to clear
their names against a stubborn backdrop of entrenched racial bias and fear-driven crime and drug war
policies that fueled the drug sweep and ensuing convictions . The war on drugs has sent millions of people to prison
for low-level offenses, and seriously eroded our civil liberties and civil rights while costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year, with
nothing to show for it except our status as the world's largest incarcerator. There are 2.3 million people behind bars in this country
— that is triple the amount of prisoners we had in 1987 — and 25 percent of those incarcerated are locked up for drug offenses.
Taxpayers spend almost $70 billion a year on corrections and incarceration. A far more sensible way to deal with a public health
problem like drug addiction is to provide treatment, which study after study has shown is more effective than incarceration. Texas,
for example, has implemented a number of reforms in recent years that prioritize drug treatment over incarceration, and its crime
rate has dropped to its lowest rate since 1973 as a result. Through advocacy and litigation, the ACLU has been seeking an end to this
failed war on drugs and our costly addiction to incarceration for decades. For example, in the last legislative session, the ACLU of
Maryland testified in favor of two bills that would work toward minimizing the practice of incarcerating individuals convicted of
nonviolent drug offenses, offering treatment as an alternative. Today we are increasingly joined by state lawmakers,
judges, advocates, conservative and liberals alike, in recognizing that something is seriously wrong with
our criminal justice system. Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske admits the drug war strategy hasn't
worked,telling the AP: "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful ... Forty years later, the concern
about drugs and drug problem is, if anything, magnified, intensified." Most recently, in Brown v. Plata,
the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that our policies of overincarceration have produced a crisis in
California prisons, where extreme overcrowding has resulted in unconstitutional conditions . California is not
alone in having a bloated prison system, but thankfully states around the country have already recognized what California now must:
that it is "possible to reduce the prison population 'in a manner that preserves public safety and the
operation of the criminal justice system'" and also preserves the Constitution. To reflect on the dubious
occasion of the 40th anniversary of the drug war, and underscore the wide-reaching and devastating
impact of drug policies over the last four decades, the ACLU is launching a month-long blog series
dedicated to the need to end the war on drugs. Check our blog daily throughout June for posts about the
drug war, its victims and what needs to be done to restore fairness and create effective policy.
The prison industrial complex is modern fascism – it promotes a culture of
genocide which makes the extermination of populations a necessity
Dillon 2013 (Stephen, phd in philosophy, fugitive life: race, gender and the rise of the neoliberal-carceral
state,
https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/153053/Dillon_umn_0130E_13833.pdf?sequenc
e=1, LB)
Political repression in the United States has reached monstrous proportions. Black and Brown peoples
especially, victims of the most vicious and calculated forms of class, national and racial oppression, bear
the brunt of this repression. Literally tens of thousands of innocent men and women, the overwhelming
majority of them poor, fill jails and prisons; hundreds of thousands more…are subject to police, FBI, and
military intelligence surveillance.1 For Davis, the imprisonment of tens of thousands of poor people of color meant
“fascism” had taken hold in the United States. Davis’s co-editor Bettina Aptheker declared, “This is a fascist program. It
is a genocidal program.”2 James Baldwin argued that Davis’s isolation and loneliness reminded him of a “Jewish housewife in
the boxcar headed to Dachau,” describing prisons as “concentration camps” under which white Americans could
measure their safety in “chains and corpses.”3 These sentiments concerning racism and the prison formed a common
sense amongst the radical and revolutionary left in the 1970s United States. Prisons, as Michel Foucault noted in an essay
from the same year, were “a war having other fronts in the black ghettos, the army and the courts.”4
Incarceration was “an experience of [a] hostage, of a concentration camp, of class warfare, an experience
of the colonized.”5 The title of the collection itself emphasized the profound violence the black power movement felt it was
confronted with—as Baldwin exclaimed to Davis, “For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us
that night.”6 What is most breathtaking about this collection is what it tells us about the changes that
occurred to the U.S. prison system just years after Davis and her cohort declared “fascism” had gripped
the nation. Less than a decade later, a convergence between the intensely racialized politics of law and order and the poverty and
unemployment created by deindustrialization produced the largest prison system in this world. The fact that over the next forty
years the number of people in prison would expand exponentially from 200,000 in the 1970s to 2.5 million in 2000 would have been
considered practically impossible and epistemologically unthinkable to the people contesting the post-civil rights expansion of the
prison system. In fact, 1970s radicals and revolutionaries on the left thought that the worst had arrived and that
a new world was dawning. Many of the collection’s authors considered the intensity of the era’s police and
penal violence as indicative of the “serious infirmities of the social order .”7 For Davis and her co-authors, the
“bourgeois democratic state,” especially its judicial system, was “disintegrating” and the “revolutionary transformation of society”
was close at hand. In other words, the increasing brutality of the police, courts, prisons, and an emerging
economic crisis were reflective of a “profound social crisis, of systemic disintegration.”8 If we could speak
to the past and try to issue a warning of what was coming, of the unprecedented regimes of capture and
immobilization that we live with today, our warnings would be inconceivable.
Prisons can never be used for good – any reason to keep prisons first stemmed
from problems caused by cages in the first place
McLeod 15 -- Associate Professor, Georgetown University Law Center (Allegra, “Prison Abolition and
Grounded Justice,” UCLA Law Review, Number 1156, http://www.uclalawreview.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf, tony)
These horrific experiences of incarceration are not simply outlier forms of dehumanization and violence,
but are produced by the structure of U.S. imprisonment—by the basic manner in
which caging or confining human beings strips individuals of their personhood
and humanity, and sets in motion dynamics of domination and subordination. In
research widely known as the Stanford Prison Experiment, psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Craig Haney further
elucidated these structural dynamics.113 Notwithstanding subsequent criticism, their experiment revealed
how the basic structure of the prison in the United States tends toward dehumanization and violence .114
At the outset of their now famous (or infamous) experiment, Zimbardo and Haney placed a group of typical
college studentsinto a simulated prison environment on Stanford University’s campus.115 Zimbardo and
Haney randomly designated certain of the students as mock-prisoners and others as mock-guards.116 What
happened in the course of the six days that followed shocked the researchers, professional colleagues, and
the general public.117 Zimbardo and Haney found that their“‘institution’ rapidly developed sufficient power to
bind and twist human behavior . . . .”118 Mock-guards engaged with prisoners in a manner that was
“negative, hostile, af- frontive, and dehumanizing,” despite the fact that the “guards and prisoners were
essentially free to engage in any form of interaction.”119 “[V]erbal interactions were pervaded by threats,
insults and deindividuating references . . . . The negative, anti-social reactions observed were not the
product of an environment created by combining a collection of deviant personalities, but rather the result
of an intrinsically pathologicalsituation which could distort and rechannel the behavior of essentially
normal individuals.”120 The Stanford Prison Study has been criticized for methodological, ethical, and other shortcomings, but,
despite its limitations, it attests to the dehumanizing dynamics that routinely surface in carceral settings .121
According to some critics, for instance, the Stanford Prison Study reflects the participants’ obedience and conformity to stereotypic
behavior associated with prisoners and guards, rather than an effect produced exclusively and directly by the institutional
environment of prisons.122 But even if the study’s critics are correct, it remains true that these same features of conformity and
behavioral expectations obtain in actual prison environments. Therefore, whether the Stanford Prison Study measures
institutional effects or the tendency of people in such institutional settingsto conform to widely
understood behavioral expectations associated with such settings, it is still the case that these settings will
tend to reproduce powerful dynamics of dominance,subordination, dehumanization, and violence. Of
separate though equal concern, the
violence and dehumanization of incarceration not only
shapes those who are incarcerated, but produces destructive consequences for
entire communities.123 People leaving prison are marked by the experience of incarceration in ways
that makes the world outside prison more violent and insecure; it becomes harder to find employment
and to engage in collective social life because of the stigma of criminal conviction .124 Further,
incarcerating individuals has harmful effects on their families. The children, parents,
and neighbors of prisoners suffer while their mothers, fathers, children, and community members are
confined.125 Coming of age with a parent incarcerated generally has a substantial and negative impact on
the life chances of young people.126 It is insufficient to simply seek to reform the most
egregious instances of violence and abuse that occur in prison while retaining a commitment to
prisonbacked criminal law enforcement as a primary social regulatory framework. Of course, less violence in
these places would undoubtedly render prisons more habitable, but the degradation associated with
incarceration in the United States is at the heart of the structure of imprisonment elucidated decades ago
by Sykes: Imprisonment in its basic structure entails caging or imposed physical constriction, minute
control of prisoners’ bodies and most intimate experiences, profound depersonalization, and institutional
dynamics that tend strongly toward violence. These dehumanizing aspects of incarceration
are unlikely to be meaningfully eliminated in the U.S., following decades of failed efforts to that end,
while retaining a commitment to the practice of imprisonment. This is especially so in the United States for reasons related to the
specific historical and racially subordinating legacies of American incarceration and punitive policing. Two hundred and
forty years of slavery and ninety years of legalized segregation, enforced in large
measure through criminal law administration, render U.S. carceral and punitive
policing practices less amenable to the reforms undertaken, for example, in
Scandinavian countries, which have more substantially humanized their
prisons.127
Additionally, hyper incarceration has divided communities of color and locking
them into poverty – the only means of survival has become a unique site of
dehumanization. Additionally, this limits black access to the political which makes
the aff a prerequisite to effective reforms
Cooper 13 -- Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School (Frank Rudy, “We Are Always Already
Imprisoned: Hyper-Incarceration and Black Male Identity Performance,” Legal Studies Research Paper
Series, Research Paper 13-20, Suffolk University, July 1, 2013, tony)
While some refer to the carceral result of the War on Drugs as “mass incarceration ,” I accept Loic
Wacquant’s definition of it as “hyperincarceration.” 35 My reasons for doing so are two-fold. First,
hyperincarceration is “hyper” in the sense that it represents an out-of-control explosion in incarceration.36
Second, hyper-incarceration is “hyper” in the sense that it is targeted at specific groups of people .37 This
Section demonstrates that the War on Drugs has created a situation where hyperincarceration of men of color
is presumed to be normal. The explosion in incarceration has its roots in the so-called War on
Drugs.38 The War on Drugs is ongoing and consists of a constellation of policies designed to discourage
the production, distribution, and consumption of illegal psychoactive drugs such as heroin, cocaine,
methamphetamine, and marijuana.39 While there have been spectacular attempts to stop production and
high-level distribution of drugs, the drug war has mostly focused on the lowlevel distribution and day-to-day
consumption of drugs.40 Moreover, a large percentage of drug-war arrests are for possession of personaluse amounts of marijuana,41 a low-level drug that significant percentages of the population, across races,
have tried at some point. Some people think of marijuana as a black drug. That assumption may come from frequent mentions
of marijuana in rap songs.42 Despite this perception, rates
of drug use are very similar across races.43
Accordingly, one would expect rates of drug arrests to be similar, but they are not.44 As I often tell my law
students, if the police focused the drug war on college dormitories , they would catch many more drug users
than they do by concentrating on minority neighborhoods . I view the nervous laughter that usually follows as
confirmation of my hypothesis. The
War on Drugs is the primary reason for the racial
disproportionality in hyper-incarceration.45 There are stark racial disparities in arrests and
convictions for drug crimes. In some major cities, eighty percent of young black men have
criminal records.46 Nationwide, one in three young black men is under the control of the criminal
justice system.47 That includes those in jail, but also those on probation or parole. 48 Perhaps the most
important consequence of a conviction is the fact that a person can be required to report it on job applications. 49
Making such a report obviously taints one’s application . It should come as no surprise, then, that
exconvicts are often unemployed and overwhelmingly underemployed .50 Other post-conviction
disabilities, such as deprivation of the right to vote, perpetuate the notion that people who have
contact with the criminal justice system are permanently excluded from mainstream society . It is this overall
sense of second-class citizenship that Alexander refers to when she calls hyperincarceration the New Jim Crow,51 tracing its roots to
U.S. chattel bondage of Africans.52 The history of racism in the United States shows common sense at work.
Slavery, the United States’ “peculiar institution,” 53 required not just force, but ideology. Poor whites had to be
systematically inculcated with the idea that they were different from blacks .54 White supremacy was explicit
during this time. The contradiction between liberalism and slavery was resolved by considering Africans to be
categorically inferior.55 After the abolition of slavery, there was a period of racial uncertainty56 in which
there were possibilities for black-white coalitions.57 These coalitions did not materialize, however, as Northern whites
capitulated to Southern whites’ desire for control of their region.58 Northern whites knew this would mean Southern white
domination of blacks, but forged ahead with the Great Compromise anyway upon Southern whites’ word that they would uphold
equality.59 The inevitable revitalization of white supremacy came in the form of Jim Crow segregation of the
races. Black codes established a system of peonage designed to control the recently freed black slaves .
Among the most relevant laws for our purposes were those establishing a presumption in criminal cases
that white women would not consent to sex with a black man.60 It was a presumption that black
men were rapists.61 As in all common sense, a perspective – biologically based white supremacy
– was
made the baseline, and could thus become ingrained in the normal workings
of mainstream institutions.
Thus the plan: The United States federal government should abolish its domestic prisons.
Brick by brick, stone by stone – you have an obligation to tear down the walls of
racial hierarchies
BARNDT 2k7 (Joseph-has been a parish pastor and an antiracism trainer and organizer for thirty years,
much of the latter work being done with Crossroads Ministry, Chicago, which he directed for eighteen
years; Director of Crossroads, a non profit organization “Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The
Twenty-First Century Challenge To White America;” pp.219-220)
To study racism is to study walls. In every chapter of this book, we have looked at barriers and fences, restraints and limitations,
ghettos and prisons, bars and curtains. We have examined a prison of racism that confines us all-people of color
and white people alike. Victimizers as well as victims are in shackles. The walls of the prison forcibly separate
communities of color and white communities from each other, as well as divide communities of color from each other. In
our separate prisons we are all shut off from each other. The constraints imposed on people of color by subservience,
powerlessness, and poverty are inhuman and injust; but the effects of uncontrolled power, privilege, and greed that are the marks of
our white prison inevitably destroy white people as well. To dismantle racism is to tear down walls. The walls of racism
can be dismantled. We are not condemned to an inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility of
freedom. Brick by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural racism
can be destroyed. It is an organizing task that can be accomplished. You and I are urgently called to join the efforts
of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all the walls of racism. The walls of racism must be dismantled. Facing up to
these realities offers new possibilities, but refusing to face them threatens yet great dangers. The results of
centuries of national and worldwide colonial conquest and racial domination , of military buildups and violent aggression, of
over-consumption and environmental destruction may be reaching a point of no return. The moment of self-destruction seems to be
drawing every more near, nationally and globally . A small and predominately white minority of the global population derives
its power and privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of color. For the sake of the
world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue. Dismantling racism also means building something new. It
means building an antiracist society. The bricks that were used to build the walls of the prison must now be used for a
better purpose. Just as we must tear down wall brick by brick, so also we must build new structures of
power and justice. Although we still need many more reminders that we cannot build a multiracial and multicultural society
without tearing down the walls of racism, this negative reminder must be turned around and stated in reverse: we cannot tear
down the walls without building new antiracist structures of power in our institutions and communities .
Transforming and building anti-racist institutions is the path to a racism-free society.
The prison industrial complex should come first – the imperial nature of the PIC
functions as an impact magnifier for any eruption of violence
David 8 (gilbert, “A SYSTEM WITH IN THE SYSTEM: THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COM PLEX AND
IMPERIALISM,” Abolition Now! Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial
Complex, ed. CR-10 Publications Collective, 2008, LB)
"Imperialism" may sound like the kind of rhetoric we want to avoid, but it's one word that needs to be
rescued as the best way to name the system that rules over us. The basis of imperialism is the relentless
quest for profits around the globe. Its most striking characteristic is the colossal and grotesque polarization of wealth. That
polarization happens between nations, between the rich countries of the North and the impoverished ones of the global South, the
impoverished countries of Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia; and at the same time within each country based on class, race
and gender. The poles of dazzling wealth and abject poverty are intimately linked, as the former results from
the ruthless plunder of the latter. This system is built on and intensifies all the major forms of oppression:
patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, all of which are structurally central. At the same time,
"imperialism" highlights the global character of the system in a way that explains why the most intense
oppression and resistance have been in the South and that also provides the context for why the liberation
struggles of the various peoples of color have been in the forefront within the US. There is no way to
capture what this system costs in human life and potential, the pain and the loss for all of us. Close to one
billion human beings suffer chronic hunger, while another two billion face nutritional deficiencies; one
billion lack access to clean drinking water. Just looking at children under the age of five, imperialism is a
holocaust in progress: over 9 million die each year from easily preventable causes associated with poverty.
The price for future generations may be even more severe as the rapaciousness of this global frenzy for
profits threatens the very ecological basis for sustaining human life of any scale. Since most people won't
accept living in squalor amid plenty, imperialism entails both the most sophisticated and the most brutal
forms of social control. Its most salient feature is war, war after war after war, mainly against the peoples
of the South. The domestic front-line of such repression is a truly violent and harmful prison industrial
complex.
Our strategy is not reformism, nor is it a call for fixing a broken system but a total
destruction of prison society
Herzing 2005 (Rachel, activist from the US with almost 20 years of organising experience, came to the
forum and gave a talk about the work and politics of two US prison abolitionist organisations "Defending
Justice - What Is The Prison Industrial Complex?" N.p., 2005. Web. 17 July 2015.
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/overview/herzing_pic.html, LB)
The U.S. prison industrial complex is not a broken system in need of repair. It is a system that works. Over
the course of its development, it has actually become even more effective in its purpose-controlling and
disappearing those people who present the greatest potential challenges to the U.S. power structure. By
saying that I do not mean to say that mistakes are never made in policing, the courts or imprisonment. Many mistakes are made
each day. What I do mean is that if we truly desire social justice, we must not fight to improve this killing
machine. We must eliminate it. Taking steps toward creating a world not controlled by the prison
industrial complex will entail a substantial shift in our common sense understandings about what makes
us safe and secure. While acknowledging the very real harms that are done to people each day, we must push ourselves to
broaden our options in responding to those harms. Creating a wider spectrum for economic and political
participation; making affordable, quality housing for everyone a priority; or understanding substance use
as a health issue can help us challenge some of the assumptions on which the prison industrial complex is
based. Many people would like to see quick, easy solutions to our current crisis. Starving the prison industrial complex of
its power and material resources will require much more than a quick fix, however. It will mean trying to
resolve conflicts without involving the cops, or opening our own homes as safe havens for our friends and family members in need,
or creating job and housing opportunities for people coming home from jails and prisons rather than shutting doors to them, or
making it economically impossible for corporations to invest in prison construction or labor. Unfortunately there is no single
answer that meets the needs of all our communities. What seems certain is that we need to begin to believe that a world
beyond surveillance, policing and imprisonment is possible and turn those beliefs into reality. The reforms for which many
have worked so tirelessly have not lessened the negative impacts of the prison industrial complex. In fact,
many reforms have only made the prison industrial complex stronger and more durable .23
Refuse any ideology that demands the continuation of the prison system – white
supremacy creates laws to capture any form of alterity that exists in our perfect
world, working on helping people at an individual level is more beneficial for those
encaged now
Davis 2003 (Angela Y professor of history of consciousness at the University of California, Are Prisons
Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories, 2003, http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wpcontent/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf, LB)
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 imprisonmentdemilitarization 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. The creation of new institutions that lay claim to the space now occupied by the prison can
eventually start to crowd out the prison so that it would inhabit increasingly smaller areas of our social and psychic landscape.
Schools can therefore be seen as the most powerful alternative to jails and prisons. Unless the current structures of
violence are eliminated from schools in impoverished comrmmities of color-including the presence of
armed security guards and police-and unless schools become places that encourage the joy of learning,
these schools will remain the major conduits to prisons. The alternative would be to transform schools into
vehicles for decarceration. Within the health care system, it is important to emphasize the current scarcity
of institutions available to poor people who suffer severe mental and emotional illnesses . There are currently
more people with mental and emotional disorders in jails and prisons than in mental institutions. This call for new facilities
designed to assist poor people should not be taken as an appeal to reinstitute the old system of mental
institutions, which wereand in many cases still are-as repressive as the prisons. It is simply to suggest that the
racial and class disparities in care available to the affluent and the deprived need to be eradicated, thus creating another vehicle for
decarceration. To reiterate, rather than try to imagine one single alternative to the existing system of incarceration, we might
envision an array of alternatives that will require radical transformations of many aspects of our society. Alternatives that
fail
to address racism, male dominance, homophobia, class bias, and other structures of domination will not,
in the final analysis, lead to decarceration and will not advance the goal of abolition. It is within this context
that it makes sense to consider the decriminalization of drug use as a significant component of a larger strategy to simultaneously
oppose structures of racism within the criminal justice system and further the abolitionist agenda of decarceration. Thus, with
respect to the project of challenging the role played by the so-called War on Drugs in bringing huge
numbers of people of color into the prison system, proposals to decriminalize drug use should be linked to
the development of a constellation of free, community-based programs accessible to all people who wish
to tackle their drug problems. This is not to suggest that all people who use drugs-or that only people who use illicit 'drugs—
need such help. However, anyone, regardless of economic status, who wishes to conquer drug addiction should
be able to enter treatment programs.
Case
Necroptx impact
Prisons construct a necropolitical zone that invisibilizes bodies in order to destroy
them – only abolition solves
Sharman 2014 (Samantha, phd in gender studies, destabilizing the prison industrial complex:
necropolitics, biopolitics and the reproduction of sovereignty, university of Arizona,
http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/bitstream/10150/321955/1/azu_etd_mr_2014_0202_sip1_
m.pdf, LB)
Prisons are not death factories—they are not Nazi camps or even necessarily way stations before execution (though in some cases
they may be). I do not mean that every body that enters a prison is executed or physically destroyed. Prisons, I contend, are a
necropolitical tool, a mechanization of social death. I would like us to think about death as a politics of
death, which, as I contend in the case of the PIC, manifest in two ways: the erasure and destruction of racialized
bodies and populations, and the production of the living dead, the socially dead. The PIC invisibilizes
bodies and razes populations. It removes individual people from their communities4 , from the social
world, thus invisibilizing them and erasing them from the collective imaginary. And because this emerges
through a racialized process, it dismantles and attempts to extirpate whole communities and populations—all the while cloaked in
colorblindness and neoliberalism. The process through, and rate at which, these communities are being razed is reflective of
genocide. Regarding genocide, Gregg Barak, Jeanne Flavin, and Paul Leighton contend in Class, Race, Gender and Crime: Social
Realities of Justice in America: [Many Americans] tend to associate genocide with the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, which creates a
distorted standard because it is an extreme case rather than a more typical one. The core concept, however, is ‘an attempt
to exterminate a racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, or political group, either directly through murder or
indirectly by creating conditions that lead to the group’s destruction’. Such destruction encompasses ‘not
only killing but creation of conditions that materially or psychologically destroy or diminish people’s
dignity, happiness, and capacity to fulfill basic material needs’” [emphasis added] (90). Just as the presence of
Jewish peoples does not undermine the reality and severity of the Holocaust of Nazi Germany (Barak, 2001, 91), the presence of
black communities in the U.S. does not mean that black communities are not being systemically socially and physically destroyed.
Next I would like to introduce the concept of social death. I bring us into conversation with Achille Mbembe, Lisa Cacho, and F.W.J.
Schelling to produce the following definition of social death: the expulsion of the subject from humanity through the
removal of potentiality. We should understand death not just as physical death, but as life incapable of
life. This is the condition of the subject living under social death: the erasure of the possibility of
potentiality— In other words, life incapable of living, of realizing their potential. The prisoner, not unlike the
slave, experiences four forms of loss: loss of community, loss of home, loss of rights over one’s body, and
loss of political power (Mbembe, 2003, 21). Value and autonomy are removed from the body of the prisoner.
This loss is identical with absolute domination and social death (Mbembe, 2003, 21). Bodies are made intelligible through visibility
and the assignation of value. When these components are removed, what is left of the body? What is left for the
body? If life entails being able to live, having the possibility to fulfill personhood, those who live social deaths may be physically
alive, but their bodies are void of life. As Lisa Marie Cacho argues in Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization
of the Unprotected, the PIC produces (and is produced by) a larger context of social death. Bodies do not have to physically
be in a prison to be socially killed by the PIC. Members of certain categories of racialized populations are always
and already criminalized. “Gang members” and “illegal aliens” for example, regardless of behavior or acts, are criminalized for
their inclusion in social groups. In other words, they are criminalized for their identities. Criminalized subjects, though they
may not be exiled in prisons, are socially dead: they do not have the possibility to fulfill personhood, and
their value is removed—making them unintelligible to the population at large. This is the death to which I refer
when I argue that the PIC is a necropolitical tool of death. This is not to undermine the reality of physical death produced
by PIC, however. Conditions in many prisons do produce physical death—both through violence and neglect.
Furthermore, the violence which both perpetuates, and is perpetuated by, the PIC produces physical death daily—overwhelmingly
for black men. I want us to think bigger, however, and see the PIC as a cultural project which produces socially dead
subjects—bodies of the living dead.
Politics of uncomfortability good
Outrage is a necessary political strategy – self-examination is required for a
durable destruction of the prison
Najarro 2015 (Mauricio. "Sustainable Activism, Prison Abolition, & the Spirituality of
Recovery." Religion and Incarceration. N.p., 25 Feb. 2015. Web. 23 July 2015.
http://religionandincarceration.com/2015/02/25/sustainable-activism-prison-abolition-the-spiritualityof-recovery-2/, LB)
Confronting the problem of mass incarceration in the United States today requires not only commitment
and investment, but also endurance, compassion, and humility . It is, however, very difficult to cultivate these virtues
while honestly and courageously acknowledging the debilitating emotional reactions that accompany sustained contact with police
brutality, radical socioeconomic inequality, and the disavowals and apathy that constitute the privilege of some achieved at the
expense of others. Theological reflection on liberation from enslavement to the emotional consequences of
structural sin can provide orientation and inspiration leading to sustainable activism. Affective liberation,
freedom for action and from affective attachment, has the ability to ground both conscientious
educational initiatives inside prisons and spiritually nourishing activist movements beyond prison walls.
Working within prisons and towards prison abolition, while building communities and coalitions,
demands a significant investment from individuals who are called not only to action but also to selfexamination. Learning the truth of oppression often elicits a deep and debilitating rage . Anger, particularly in
the form of self-righteous indignation, is a toxic fuel that poisons the communal atmosphere and corrodes the possibility of
meaningful dialogue. Individuals both inside and outside prisons must transform their justified anger from
self-righteous and corrosive indignation to orienting, productive, and enabling outrage. Outrage, unlike
resentment, results in liberating praxis that recognizes the dangers of codependency in social justice work. Liberation in its
broadest sense thus includes a struggle for justice within a freedom from affective attachment and
codependent obsession.
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse is endemic to the prison industrial complex
McLeod 15 -- Associate Professor, Georgetown University Law Center (Allegra, “Prison Abolition and
Grounded Justice,” UCLA Law Review, Number 1156, http://www.uclalawreview.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf, tony)
In addition to the dehumanization entailed by the regular and pervasive role of solitary confinement in
U.S. jails, prisons, and other detention centers, the environment of prison itself is productive of further
violence as prisoners seek to dominate and control each other to improve their relative social position
through assault, sexual abuse, and rape. This feature of rampant violence, presaged by Sykes’s account,
arises from the basic structure of prison society, from the fact that the threat of physical force imposed by
prison guards cannot adequately ensure order in an environment in which persons are confined against
their will, held captive, and feared by their custodians.98 Consequently, order is produced through an
implicitly sanctioned regime of struggle and control between prisoners.99 Rape, in particular, is rampant in
U.S. jails and prisons.100 According to a conservative estimate by the U.S. Department of Justice, 13
percent of prison inmates have been sexually assaulted in prison, with many suffering repeated sexual assaults.101
While noting that “the prevalence of sexual abuse in America’s inmate confinement facilities is a problem
of substantial magnitude,” the Department of Justice acknowledged that “in all likelihood the institution-reported
data significantly undercounts the number of actual sexual abuse victims in prison, due to the
phenomenon of underreporting.”102 Although the Department had previously recorded 935 instances of confirmed sexual
abuse for 2008, further analysis produced a figure of 216,000 victims that year (victims, not incidents).103 These figures
suggest an endemic problem of sexual violence in U.S. prisons and jails produced by the structure of
carceral confinement and the dynamics that inhere in prison settings. In one notable case that makes vivid these
underlying dynamics, Roderick Johnson sued seven Texas prison officials for failing to protect him from
victimization by prison gang members who raped him hundreds of times and sold him between rival
gangs for sex over the course of eighteen months.104 Johnson, a gay man who had struggled with drug
addiction, was incarcerated for probation violations following a burglary conviction.105 Rape was so
prevalent in the facility where Johnson was incarcerated that it had a relatively fixed price: A former
prisoner witness explained to the judge and jury at the trial that a purchased rape in that prison cost
between $3 and $7.106 When Johnson sought protection from prison officials, hewastold he would have
to “fight or fuck.”107 Seeking to avoid liability at trial, one of the prison official defendants , Jimmy
Bowman, explained that prison officials were not responsible for failing to protect Johnson because “ an
inmate has to defend himself.”108 Richard E. Wathen, the assistant warden, conceded that “[p]rison . . . is
a violent place,” but he testified that prison officials ought not to be held accountable under the Eighth
Amendment for repeated gang rapes of prisoners if there was little officials could have done to prevent the
abuse: “I believe that we did the right thing then, and I would make the same decision today. . . . There has
to be some extreme threat beforewe put an offenderin safekeeping.”109 In any event, safekeeping in
many detention settings only amounts to solitary confinement. And though prisoners are
less likely to be subject to rape if they are held in relative isolation for their own protection, they are likely
to suffer other substantial psychological harm, as previously noted .110 Ultimately, Johnson lost his civil case
as the jury found for the prison officials.111 After his trial, Johnson relapsed in his addiction recovery,
reoffended by attempting to steal money (presumably to buy drugs), and returned to serve out a further
nineteen-year prison sentence.112
Blackness
The Ideology surrounding prisons has transcended police handcuffing promoters
of injustice; rather, whiteness constructs all non-white bodies as deviant threats,
thereby promoting the “Prison Industrial Complex”
Davis 98 – former Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, PhD., Political and Social Activist
(Angela, “Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex,”
http://www.colorlines.com/articles/masked-racism-reflections-prison-industrial-complex, Colorlines,
Sept. 10, 1998, tony)
Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden
people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently
grouped together under the category “crime” and by the automatic attribution of
criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental
illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human
beings contending with them are relegated to cages. Prisons thus perform a feat of magic. Or
rather the people who continually vote in new prison bonds and tacitly assent to a proliferating network of
prisons and jails have been tricked into believing in the magic of imprisonment. But prisons do not
disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast
numbers of people from poor, immigrant, and racially marginalized communities has literally become big
business. The seeming effortlessness of magic always conceals an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes
work. When prisons disappear human beings in order to convey the illusion of solving social problems,
penal infrastructures must be created to accommodate a rapidly swelling population of caged people.
Goods and services must be provided to keep imprisoned populations alive. Sometimes these populations
must be kept busy and at other times -- particularly in repressive super-maximum prisons and in INS
detention centers -- they must be deprived of virtually all meaningful activity. Vast numbers of handcuffed
and shackled people are moved across state borders as they are transferred from one state or federal
prison to another. All this work, which used to be the primary province of government, is now also
performed by private corporations, whose links to government in the field of what is euphemistically
called “corrections” resonate dangerously with the military industrial complex. The dividends that
accrue from investment in the punishment industry, like those that accrue from investment
in weapons production, only amount to social destruction. Taking into account the structural
similarities and profitability of business-government linkages in the realms of military production and
public punishment, the expanding penal system can now be characterized as a “prison
industrial complex.”
The prison is no longer the savior from violence and lascivious activity – rather,
they target bodies deemed criminally suspect by whiteness. The Prison Industrial
Complex IS structural racism.
Davis 98 – former Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, PhD., Political and Social Activist
(Angela, “Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex,”
http://www.colorlines.com/articles/masked-racism-reflections-prison-industrial-complex, Colorlines,
Sept. 10, 1998, tony)
Almost two million people are currently locked up in the immense network of U.S. prisons and jails.
More than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color . It is rarely
acknowledged that the fastest growing group of prisoners are black women and
that Native American prisoners are the largest group per capita. Approximately five
million people -- including those on probation and parole -- are directly under the
surveillance of the criminal justice system. Three decades ago, the imprisoned population was
approximately one-eighth its current size. While women still constitute a relatively small percentage of
people behind bars, today the number of incarcerated women in California alone is almost twice what the
nationwide women’s prison population was in 1970. According to Elliott Currie, “[t]he prison has become
a looming presence in our society to an extent unparalleled in our history -- or that of any other
industrial democracy. Short of major wars, mass incarceration has been the most thoroughly
implemented government social program of our time.” To deliver up bodies destined for profitable
punishment, the political economy of prisons relies on racialized assumptions of
criminality -- such as images of black welfare mothers reproducing criminal children -- and on
racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns. Colored bodies
constitute the main human raw material in this vast experiment to disappear the
major social problems of our time. Once the aura of magic is stripped away from the
imprisonment solution, what is revealed is racism, class bias, and the parasitic seduction of capitalist
profit. The prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its
inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems
that have led to spiraling numbers of prisoners. As prisons take up more and more space on
the social landscape, other government programs that have previously sought to respond to social needs -such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families -- are being squeezed out of existence. The deterioration
of public education, including prioritizing discipline and security over learning in public schools located in
poor communities, is directly related to the prison “solution.”
That process of allows for white self-decriminalization at the expense of bodies of
color – this pushes white illegality to the sidelines
Martinot 10 -- Instructor Emeritus at the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs at San Francisco State
University (Steve “The Machinery of Whiteness: Studies in the Structure of Racialization,” Temple
University Press, pp. 20-23, 2010, tony)
Having its origin in coloniality, “racialization” emerges from a history of criminality,
including kidnapping, false imprisonment, forced labor, murder, contempt for
personhood, assault, torture, and theft of land. In all this, whiteness signified dominance, or the
production of dominance, and as Ruth Frankenberg argues, still does (Frankenberg 1993, 231). “Race” and white- ness
remain a power hierarchy that takes that criminality as its tradition. Today, in its daily relationship
to black people, for instance, it models itself on that colonialism through its violation of the (social) contract
(disenfranchisement), stalking (in department stores and police profiling), social exclusion (school tracking and neighborhood
segregation), consistent terrorism (police brutality), fraud (redlining and disparate mortgage rates), extortion (felonization of
misdemeanors), and blackmail (plea bargaining). All of these constitute elements of the process of racialization. Insofar as the
primary symbology of race has become the criminalization of the racialized, the sociopolitical function of that criminalization is precisely to decriminalize whites in their acts of
racialization. It is the relation between the criminalization of others and white selfdecriminalization that marks the history of race and whiteness in the United States. Let us
mention a few moments in the trajectory of this relation. In 1800 a group of free African-Americans from
Pennsylvania petitioned Congress to end the slave trade and begin the abolition of slavery
altogether. A mere twenty-four years had passed since the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed all to have the right to
liberty. Though the petition was mild in its terms and correct in its utilization of respectable channels of political expression, it
was rejected outright by Congress, and resulted in a move to deny (that is, to criminalize)
the right to petition for African-Americans (Litwack 1961, 34). In an 1806 congressional debate on how to deal
with smugglers of slaves into the United States after the slave trade was banned, some suggested that the smuggled slaves should be
freed and released, thinking that would dissuade the smugglers. Southern Congressmen argued that free black
people “threatened to become ‘instruments of murder, theft, and conflagration,’” and that
while slavery might be cruel it was the only way to ensure “the safety of the white
community.” Both sides then agreed that Africans, if freed, would perish quickly with no one to give them assistance (Robinson
Introduction 21 1971, 325–326). In other words, at the highest levels of government, pro- slavery and
anti-slavery advocates united in affirming this white supremacist “realism” that no one
would provide these victims of criminality (e.g., kidnap- ping, enslavement, abandonment to the elements) a
helping hand. Where white criminality toward black people was acceptable, a prodemocratic ethic of political or social inclusion of people wronged by their capture
remained undiscussable. When black people were disenfranchised under Jim Crow, it meant that they could not testify in
court against a white person. Thus, white decriminalization with respect to black people was even
written into the law and into court procedures. When police barriers and electoral malfeasance pre- vented
more than 100,000 black people from voting in Florida in 2000 (see note 8), the issue that was permitted to emerge as a political
concern was not the criminality of the police or electoral personnel who had deprived people of the vote, but rather that people
themselves had voted in an inept manner (hanging chads, for instance). Those prevented from voting were given no voice. In
contradistinction, a myriad of socio-political institutions (corporations, unions, political parties, electoral systems,
etc.) have constructed themselves in a manner to maintain white dominance over the social
categories into which whites have placed all others (hiring bias, segregationism, etc.). Individual racism has
relied on that institutional integument to preserve the culture of domination that makes individual racism both possible and
permissible. Today, during the first decade of the twenty-first century, the same ethic persists.
In Jena, black self-defense is criminalized and white aggression is decriminalized.
Immigrants from Latin America, without proper papers, are detained indefinitely when
not immediately deported, even though indefinite detention is a violation of the
Constitution. The Constitution holds that habeas corpus shall not be withheld from anyone except for extreme (mili- tary)
threats to public safety. The mere fact that these immigrants do not have the proper papers is used
to decriminalize the violation of its own Constitution by an entire branch of the Justice
Department (Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE]). Yet only marginal organizations, such as the ACLU or immigrant
rights movements, seem to recognize the criminality of this. (We look more closely at the connection between slavery and being an
“illegal” immigrant in Chapter 5.) This sense of legitimate violation of the Constitution is not
unconnected to the white purity concept. White self-decriminalization, central to the ethic
of whiteness, provides it with its sense of cultural purity. This “cultural” purity is not the
same as the original white purity condition by which whites defined themselves and race in
the first place. What it marks, however, is an extension of that originary purity concept to the
domain of social identity, insofar as both define themselves through what they have
defined as “other.” But the ethical inversion contained in white self-decriminalization works
against itself. To construct whiteness out of a purity concept implies imposing a non-purity,
an impurity or corruption, on others through that “white” perspective. They become less than
human. But to associate the purity condition with an anti-democratic dehumanization of
other people means to depend on the criminality of exclusionism, and on the necessity to
decriminalize the whiteness produced. The originary purity concept thus corrupts itself.
Whiteness cannot escape the corruption of basing a sense of humanity (and of its humanity) on an
exclusionism. One reason many white people wish to think of themselves as simply human
is to evade the inherent corruption that whiteness imposes on them. The exclusionary
ancestry that has produced one as white stands in contradiction to being “just human.” But
to shift identification in that way means to submerge oneself in a corrupted concept of the human because it emerges from white
society, already imprisoned in a supremacism and its artificial division of humanity. To seek to see oneself as simply human without
dis- mantling the purity/corruption binary by which whiteness has defined itself is to accept the white supremacist corruption of the
human. The idea of being “simply human” might allow white people to think of races as
existing in some kind of parity, on a horizontal plane. But this horizontality is then only
another form of decriminalization of the criminality of having imposed a vertical hierarchy
on people in the first place. Many white people claim that whiteness and white supremacy are not the same thing, and
they seek a sense of whiteness that is not supremacist. We examine whether this is a possible position to take, or whether one’s nonacceptance of white exclusionism implies a non-acceptance of whiteness itself, in Chapter 7. But as Frankenberg warns
us, white people simply assume a natural or universal significance for what they do or say.
For them, the assumption of individuality seems assured, since they can “dys-consciously”
(to use Frances Rains’s term [1998, 87]) ignore their participation in what is done to other people
socially. The white individualist, for instance, is one who thinks he or she can escape what the system does because individual
acts are by nature not systemic. But such “innocence” is a luxury provided the hegemonic, which allows them to ignore the fact that
the meaning of their acts is pre- cisely systemic. That is what “hegemony” means. Indeed, “hegemony” is itself one of the meanings
that individualism is given. To seek dysconscious com- fort in one’s individualism ignores the fact
that the meanings individual acts obtain are social meanings, given by others, and that
the acts of those of a hegemonic group are thereby given hegemonic meanings. It is a
reflection of the white self-decriminalization ethic that for the hegemonic mind, a white
person’s acts represent only themselves while a black person’s acts (for instance) represent
“their race” (McIntosh 1997).
Prisons are the cages of civil society – the master/slave dialectic is recreated as
prisoners are denied the possibility of subjectivity
McLeod 15 -- Associate Professor, Georgetown University Law Center (Allegra, “Prison Abolition and
Grounded Justice,” UCLA Law Review, Number 1156, http://www.uclalawreview.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf, tony)
Prisons are places of intense brutality, violence, and dehumanization.70 In his seminal
study of the New Jersey State Prison, The Society of Captives, sociologist Gresham M. Sykes carefully exposed
how the
fundamental structure of the modern U.S. prison degrades the inmate’s basic humanity and sense of
selfworth.71 Caged or confined and stripped of his freedom, the prisoner is forced to
submit to an existence without the ability to exercise the basic capacities that
define personhood in a liberal society.72 The inmate’s movement is tightly
controlled, sometimes by chains and shackles, and always by orders backed with
the threat of force;73 his body is subject to invasive cavity searches on command;74
he is denied nearly all personal possessions; his routines of eating, sleeping, and
bodily maintenance are minutely managed; he may communicate and interact
with others only on limited terms strictly dictated by his jailers; and he is reduced
to an identifying number, deprived of all that constitutes his individuality .75 Sykes’s
account of “the pains of
imprisonment”76 attends not only to the dehumanizing effects of this basic structure
of imprisonment—which remains relatively unchanged from the New Jersey penitentiary of 1958 to the
U.S. jails and prisons that abound today77—but also to its violent effects on the personhood of the
prisoner: [H]owever painful these frustrations or deprivations may be in the immediate terms of thwarted goals,
discomfort, boredom, and loneliness, they
carry a more profound hurt as a set of threats or
attacks which are directed against the very foundations of the prisoner’s being . The
individual’s picture of himself as a person of value . . . begins to waver and grow dim.78 In addition to
routines of minute bodily control, thousands of persons are increasingly subject to long-term and nearcomplete isolation in prison. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has estimated that 80,000 persons are caged in solitary
confinement in the United States, many enduring isolation for years.79 Solitary confinement routinely entails being
locked for twenty-three to twenty-four hours per day in a small cell, between forty-eight and eighty square
feet, without natural light or control of the electric light, and no view outside the cell .80 Persons so
confined may be able to spend one hour per day in a “concrete exercise pen,” which,
although partially open to the outdoors, istypically still configured as a cage.81 Raymond Luc Levasseur, who was held in
solitary confinement at the Federal Correctional Complex at Florence, Colorado, a prison devoted to solitary confinement (also
called administrative segregation (ADX)), wrote of the first year of hisisolation: Picture a cage where top, bottom, sides
and back are concrete walls. The front is sliced by steel bars. . . . The term “boxcar” is derived from this
configuration: a small, enclosed box that [does not] move. . . . The purpose of a boxcar cell is to gouge the
prisoner’s senses by suppressing human sound, putting blinders about our eyes and forbidding touch. . . .
It seems endless. Each morning I look at the same gray door and hear the same rumbles followed by long
silences. It is endless. . . . I see forced feedings, cell extractions . . . . Airborne bags of shit and gobs of spit
become the response of the caged. The minds of some prisoners are collapsing in on them. . . . One
prisoner subjected to four-point restraints (chains, actually) as shock therapy had been chewing on his own
flesh. Every seam and crack is sealed so that not a solitary weed will penetrate this
desolation . . . . When they’re done with us, we become someone else’s problem.82
Following thirteen years of solitary confinement, Levasseur was released from prison in 2004.83 The images that follow are not
primarily intended to render more vivid this exploration of incarceration and punitive policing, but instead are incorporated to
illustrate an important part of this Article’s argument:We mustlook atwhat these practices actually entail, especially
because so often the ideology of criminal regulation renders much of the criminal process and its violent
consequences opaque or even invisible to us. By removing the violent results of these
regulatory approaches from the center of our attention, and often removing them
entirely from our view, this same ideology persuades us of the necessity and
relative harmlessness of incarceration and punitive policing. An abolitionist ethic,
however, requires us to confront what penal regulation actually involves rather than
assuming that creating a certain spatial distance—by putting particular persons in cages, or
controlling individuals and communities through prison-backed police surveillance—satisfactorily
addresses the social and political problems of violence, mental illness, poverty or joblessness, among
others, that those persons and communities have come to represent. This photograph portrays prisoners who are
suffering from mental illness and subject to solitary confinement in an Ohio State Prison, held in cages for a “group
therapy” session: These persons’ bodies are revealed in this image as objects locked in isolated small
spaces, shackled, rendered plainly less than human. Cages are also used for booking mentally ill inmates
in California prisons, as reflected in the record addressed in the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Brown v.
Plata: This is a suicide watch cell, also used for isolation, in a state prison in California, drawn from a
related court record: In these cells, feces may be smeared on the walls as those detained mentally
decompensate, the odor of rot and acute despair palpable.87
Prisons exist as a technology for US global supremacy – it’s try or die for the aff
Rodriguez 8 -- Professor and Chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside, PhD. In Ethnic
Studies from Berkeley (Dylan, “I Would Wish Death on You..."
Race, Gender, and Immigration in the
Globality of the U.S. Prison Regime,” The Scholar and Feminist Online, “Borders on Belonging: Gender
and Immigration, Issue 6.3, Summer 2008, tony)
White supremacist social, economic, and cultural formations organic to the United States—from racial
chattel slavery and frontier genocide, to contemporary productions of neoliberalism and
(domestic/undeclared) warfare—constitute the ongoing emergence of American technologies of
human incarceration and punishment, although theoretical explanations of this entanglement
vary widely. For the theoretical purposes of this essay, white supremacy may be understood as a logic of social
organization that produces regimented, institutionalized, and militarized conceptions of hierarchized
"human" difference, enforced through coercions and violences that are structured by genocidal possibility
(including physical extermination and curtailment of people's collective capacities to socially, culturally,
or biologically reproduce).[5] As a historical vernacular and philosophical apparatus of domination, white supremacy is
both based on, and constantly resurfacing, notions of the white (European and Euro-American) "human"
vis-à-vis the rigorous production, penal discipline, and frequent social, political, and biological
neutralization or extermination of the (non-white) sub- or non-human. To consider white supremacy as essential
to American social formation (rather than an extremist deviation from it) facilitates a discussion of the modalities through which
this material logic of violence overdetermines the social, political, economic, and cultural structures that compose American
globality and constitute the common sense organic to its ordering. Here, I am less concerned with the broad question of how the U.S.
prison apparatus marks an extension of this national racial genealogy, than I am with the specific concern of how the prison
regime has come to constitute a qualitative carceral formation that globalizes U.S.
white supremacy as a logic of social organization that produces regimented,
institutionalized, and militarized conceptions of hierarchized "human" difference.
The globalization of white supremacy is fundamentally shaped by the mobilization
of the U.S. prison, in historically unprecedented ways, as both a material arrangement of strategically localized bodily
domination (the localities of what Julia Sudbury has called the "global prison industrial complex") and as a specific formation of
violence that produces the U.S. prison regime as a modality of power relations. It is the technology of coercion crystallized
in the institutionality of the U.S. prison (across its local variations) that expresses the constitutive
logic of the current U.S. dominance in movements of hegemonic globalization.
Perhaps most importantly, this is not a "coercion" that manifests uniformly (or even relatively evenly)
across bodies, localities, and historical moments: it is, rather, a technology of
carceral violence that draws from the essential historical components of white
supremacy as a "substructure" (following Frantz Fanon's appropriation and deforming of the Marxist lexicon) of
U.S. national formation, civil society building, and globality.
At: alt causes
Aff overcomes
Spade et al 2011 (Dean, Captive Genders: BUILDING AN ABOLITIONIST TRANS AND QUEER
MOVEMENT WITH EVERYTHING WE’VE GOT. Oakland, CA: AK, 2011,
http://theloon2013.wikispaces.com/file/view/Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-andPrison-Industrial-Complex.pdf, LB)
Discrimination laws and hate crimes laws encourage us to understand oppression as something that
happens when individuals use bias to deny someone a job because of race or sex or some other
characteristic, or beat up or kill someone because of such a characteristic . This way of thinking, sometimes called
the “perpetrator perspective,”14 makes people think about racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and
ableism in terms of individual behaviors and bad intentions rather than wide-scale structural oppression
that often operates without some obvious individual actor aimed at denying an individual person an
opportunity. The violence of imprisoning millions of poor people and people of color, for example, can’t be
adequately explained by finding one nasty racist individual, but instead requires looking at a whole web of
institutions, policies, and practices that make it “normal” and “necessary” to warehouse, displace, discard,
and annihilate poor people and people of color. Thinking about violence and oppression as the work of “a few
bad apples” undermines our ability to analyze our conditions systemically and intergenerationally, and to
therefore organize for systemic change.
At: utopian
Prison abolition is not utopian – it’s revolutionary and merits discussion
Davis 10 (Angela Y. University of California Santa Cruz History of Consciousness Department, Humanities Division, Feminist
Studies Department. “Are Prisons Obsolete?”. November 2010. http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wpcontent/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf)//JuneC//
In most parts of the world, it is taken for granted that whoever is convicted of a serious crime will be sent to prison. In some
countries-including the United States-where capital punishment has not yet been abolished, a small but significant number of
people are sentenced to death for what are considered especially grave crimes. Many people are familiar with the campaign to
abolish the death penalty. In fact, it has already been abolished in most countries. Even the staunchest advocates of capital
punishment acknowledge the fact that the death penalty faces serious challenges. Few people find life without the death penalty
difficult to imagine. On the other hand, the prison is considered an inevitable and permanent
feature of our social lives. Most people are quite surprised to hear that the prison abolition
movement also has a long history-one that dates back to the historical appearance of the
prison as the main form of punishment. In fact, the most natural reaction is to assume that
prison activists-even those who consciously refer to themselves as "antiprison activists"are simply trying to ameliorate prison conditions or perhaps to reform the prison in more
fundamental ways. In most circles prison abolition is simply unthinkable and implausible.
Prison abolitionists are dis- missed as utopians and idealists whose ideas are at best
unrealistic and impracticable, and, at worst, mystifying and foolish . This is a measure of how difficult
it is to envision a social order that does not rely on the threat of sequestering people in dreadful plaees designed to separate them
from their communities and families. The prison is considered so "natural" that it is extremely hard to
imagine life without it. It is my hope that this book will encourage readers to question their own assumptions about the
prison. Many people have already reached the conclusion that the death penalty is an
outmoded form of punishment that violates basic principles of human rights. It is time, I
believe, to encourage similar conversations about the prison. During my own career as an
antiprison activist I have seen the population of u.s. prisons increase with such rapidity that many people in black, Latino, and
Native American communities now have a far greater chance of going to prison than of getting a decent education. When many
young people decide to join the military service in order to avoid the inevitability of a stint in prison, it should cause us to wonder
whether we should not try to introduce better alternatives.
Topicality
Surveillance
Modern forms of surveillance is physically restricting – understanding
surveillance as strictly monitoring fails to capture the evolving literature
Gutwirth 13 (Serge. Professor of Human Rights, Comparative law, Legal Theory and Methodology at the Faculty of Law and
Criminology of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), where he studied law, criminology and also obtained a post-graduate degree in
technology and science studies. “Reloading Data Protection: Multidisciplinary Insights and Contemporary Challenges”. 28 October
2013. Ronald Leenes. Google Books)//JuneC//
As mentioned above, today’s surveillance is not primarily aimed at exercising a disciplinary power but has a broader scope. The
main purpose of today’s surveillance is to sort out individuals and arrange social
categories. It would be naive to argue that the final purpose of surveillance as a social
sorting is simply to identify individuals and communities. Mere identification can be considered as the
preliminary aim of surveillance as social sorting, while differentiation is at the core of this process. Indeed, social sorting is also
referred to as a “mechanism of societal differentiation”. In fact, social sorting aims to cluster populations “in order to single out
different groups for different kinds of treatment”. Although contemporary surveillance implies the exercise of a horizontal gaze, it
entails an unequal exposure to surveillance systems. Torrey has been analyzing the disproportionate effects of surveillance
distinguishing between thin and thick surveillance. Everyone is subjected to thin surveillance and it disproportionately affects the
non-poor. In contrast, thick surveillance disproportionately affects the poor. Surveillance as social sorting clusters individuals and
communities, while creating social categories. The differential deployment of surveillance systems causes marginalizing and
excluding effects which tend to discriminate particularly the poor, ethnic minorities and women. The result of this process is
‘marginalizing surveillance’ which operates by excluding individuals actively but invisibly. It follows that surveillance as social
sorting tends to encourage existing socio-spatial inequalities while resulting in a higher sense of injustice. In fact, social
sorting is considered as a “powerful means of creating and reinforcing long-term social
differences” while emphasizing the disturbingly antidemocratic character of surveillance.
As a consequence, surveillance contributes to social stratification and amplifies existing
social inequalities while reproducing conditions of social discrimination and
marginalization. This confirms that, “rather than being neutral or impacting seemingly random on individuals, forms of
surveillance may sustain or even create group-based harm, through for example, racial profiling”. The true nature of new
surveillance reveals itself when looking at it not only as a horizontal and ubiquitous gaze but as an “intervention in the social world”
of individuals for the purpose of sorting them out. Thus, it is more than appropriate to claim that today’s surveillance societies are
societies of control instead of disciplinary societies. [skip to footnote] surveillance, on the other hand, involves
confinement to delineated and often fortified spaces, in which observation is
enhanced by a limitation of the range of mobility of those observed”. Torrey (2007, pp. 116-119,
p.117).
Surveillance includes methods to prohibit mobility
University of Neuchatel 14 (Faculty of Humanities Institute of Geography. “Risk policies Geographies”. 2014 University
of Neuchatel. http://www2.unine.ch/geographie/Political_geographies_of_security#cid272588)//JuneC//
Thus at the interface of two apparently opposed worlds – the necessary circulation of objects, people, information and wealth, and
the institution of security restrictions, measures and interventions – the new geographies of surveillance are defined by a set of
practices and techniques whose key challenge is to balance and combine the demands of mobility and security. By contrast with a
mode of surveillance and regulation that limits movement, restricts access, prohibits
mobility and encloses space, the contemporary politics of surveillance positively embrace mobility as a means of
securitizing by managing the circulation and flow of people and objects. In this vision, not only do people, objects and money ‘on the
move’ characterize modern life, but they also leave the patterns, traces and transactions that make the ‘network society’ securable.
Key questions to address include:
Surveillance includes techniques to constrain mobility
Jackson 12 (Emma. Goldsmiths, University of London, Sociology/Centre for Urban and Community Research, Faculty Member.
“Fixed in Mobility: Young Homeless People and the city”. 2012. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research”.
http://www.academia.edu/1651465/Fixed_in_Mobility_Young_Homeless_People_and_the_city)//JuneC//
It should also be noted that those involved in the criminal justice system come under a variety
of
additional surveillance techniques that constrain mobility. In the first instance, those with criminal
convictions who are ‘known’ by police are more likely to be stopped by police officers . And those with
outstanding warrants have even more incentive to avoid the police at all costs. Once convinced, technologies such as
tagging and the intervention of the probation service affect the mobility of young offenders, tying them to
some places and keeping them out of others.
Physical surveillance includes confinement spaces
Hebert-Potter 14 (Stephanie-Karine. “A Critical Analysis of the Functionality of Prisons”. 27 Febrary 2014. Uprooting
Criminology. http://uprootingcriminology.org/essays/critical-analysis-functionality-prisons-2)//JuneC//
The notion of a school-to-prison pipeline first comes into play when there is a large increase in the criminalizing of disciplinary
actions in schools, which strongly resembles criminal justice policies. With the increase of criminalization of
disciplinary actions comes the increase in physical surveillance, such as security
guards and physical confinement spaces. In addition, there are technologies used and policies put into
practice, which help reinforce the increased coordination between school and prison. It must be noted that most of this occurs in
urban environments with socially and economically disadvantaged populations and minorities. Simmons (2009) argues that as a
result of these policies “minority students are more harshly treated in school spaces than they have ever been, and this acts to reify
patterns of educational disparity along the lines of race and class” (p.217). In addition to poverty, these urban minorities become cast
as the problem students creating a link between school and prison. The zero tolerance policies that the schools enforce on one
segment of the population increase the educational disparity, which can lead to permanent exclusion from future employment and
relationships that would allow them to escape the cycle. The label of “problem student” creates this self-fulfilling prophecy,
funneling them toward prisons. The prison-industrial complex reinforces the idea that prison is necessary and natural by locating
schools in prisons, and rationalizing them as a deterrent. In addition to creating a prison-industrial complex, the school-to-prison
pipeline reinforces prison’s socializing attributes further by allowing it to become a social institution.
Prisons are a surveillance mechanism – historical contextualization
Hutchinson 9 (Ray. an attorney in Dallas, Texas, who served as a Republican in the Texas House of Representatives from
District 33-Q in Dallas County from 1973 to 1977[1] and as the chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1976 to 1977.
“Encyclopedia of Urban Studies”. 15 September 2009. Google Books)//JuneC//
The city itself exists partly as a mechanism for surveillance. The concentration of
populations in an intensely territorialized space enables the counting and monitoring of
people. Historically, many cities were both bounded by a city wall and internally divided.
Gates provided pinch points and filters, a location for sorting people out: counting,
checking goods and possessions, verification or identification, disease control, taxation,
and the enforcement of fines and punishments. For example, premodern Beijing had a series of concentric
walls that separated the city on the basis of the importance of its inhabitants; individual alleys barred by wooden lattice gates were
guarded and closed at night. Many city-states had special areas reserved for traders. Particular resident “others” were also spatially
confined; for example, beginning in 1516 in Venice, Jews were restricted to the ghetto nuovo (literally “new quarter”). Many early
modern systems of order were based around generalized safety such as the hierarchical fire-wardening system and watchtowers of
tinderbox Edo (Tokyo) or the Dutch polder model of community responsibility for maintaining flood dikes Sometimes, control of
natural disasters gave opportunities for ruling classes to institute wider moral controls: politics developed in city-states of norther
Italy in response to the great plague of 1346-1350 combined concern about urban health and social unrest, laying the foundations for
modern systems of epidemiology and census. More often, surveillance was part of a strategy of securitization, for example, the
multiple informer and spies of Ottoman Istanbul or pre-Revolutionary Paris. In the modern period, there was a
general move toward the use of surveillance to resolve perceived moral problems
associated with the rebellious, the mad, the poor, and the vagrant. Whereas such people
had previously been outcast and transported or even executed by urban elites, new places
of confinement, from workhouse to prisons to asylums, emerged in the early modern
period to house them. Historian of ideas, Michel Foucault, famously used Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon as the spatial
exemplar of this shift in thinking. .In this plan for an ideal reformatory prison, prisoners were expected to alter their behavior
through the belief that they were constantly monitored. Although such ideals never fully materialized in any prison that was built,
surveillance both as an idea and as a practice infiltrated state and private organizations, from factories to schools. Originating in
arms production, in factories, new systems of rational management, which monitored and organized the time and activity of
workers, were introduced along with spatial ordering techniques like the production line.
DA
At: crime da
You have a moral obligation to abolish prisons – that outweighs
Hand-Boniakowski 2k (Jeanne E. he graduated from Castleton State College, Castleton, VT in May 1990 with an
Associates Degree in Nursing. “THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX PRISON ABOLITION”. August 2000. Metaphoria.
http://www.metaphoria.org/issues/99vol7/ac4t0008.html)//JuneC//
I cannot speak for all abolitionists, but I will here present some widely held notions that drive and inform the prison abolition
movement. There is a list of books, links and organizations for further study and action. Prisons must be abolished;
they are morally indefensible. This is an ideal, indeed, but one which can be realized,
and in our lifetimes. A century and a half ago, even many people opposed to and appalled by slavery in this nation assumed
that abolition was too idealistic, socially and economically unlikely. Abolitionists were those who continued to think outside the
huge, powerful structure of slavery, that behemoth that is today a shameful, distant history. Prison abolition is actually
an extension of that movement and of all such efforts to restore people to full humanity; to
break the shackles of both criminal and victim so they can each have lives of integrity and
dignity, so they can each be part of a caring community. Language, words, are how we
conceptualize, therefore we must use honest language. Reality is served with accurate
language, not jargon and misplaced terms that deliberately obscure or lie about prison. For
instance "corrections" as a euphemism for punishment; "inmates" or "residents" for
prisoners; "room" for cage. The system dresses itself up, wearing a mask that the wider
culture may believe if we don't look too close. Abolitionists strip off the mask that the wider culture may believe
if we don't look too close. Abolitionists strip off the mask, the fancy words and mystifying concepts; we undress the system. What
remains is the reality: cage and key. Such clarity allows and demands challenge to the
shapes of power and coercion we have unmasked. Reconciliation is the proper
response to criminal acts. At present the focus is to punish someone, an unexamined
ritual of projection which cares little or not at all about the victim's loss or the criminal's
need. Restoration to and reconciliation with a caring community, for both parties, is the
moral and the rational response. DECARCERATION: releasing as many people from cages
as possible; MORATORIUM on new prison construction, so that we take time to develop
alternatives; EXCARCERATION: stop putting people in cages, (by changing some
categories of crimes, such as decriminalizing victimless crimes, by eliminating pretrial
detention, by using community probation, creating mediation centers, options for direct
restitution to victims and/or the community...); RESTRAIN THE FEW who may be dangerous to others, with
the least restrictive, most humane means, monitored with the assumption of eventual full return to freedom, and with community
membership even during the period of restraint; CARING COMMUNITY must be built, with services, jobs, health care, the right to
vote, safe housing, education and art available to all. There is a distinction between charitable “helpers”
and prisoner allies. Charity creates dependency, paternalism, pity. It may lead to tendency
to romanticize or infantalize or proselytize the prisoner, which steals more of his
individual humanity. Charity may relieve some of the pain of prison, but does not alter or
question the conditions that give rise to the suffering. A prisoner ally works with the prisoner to change the
culture; it is a mutual vocation, so no “thank you’s” are needed. Such an ally knows that she or he or ze will be changed by the work,
not expecting to impose his own assumptions on the prisoner, but treating them as a peer in the work of justice.
Can’t solve absent discursive reconceptualization of “crime” and “punishment”
Haan 10 (Willem De. Journalist and Documentary maker. “Abolition and Crime Control”. 23 December 2010.
http://nomoreprison.blogspot.com/2010/12/abolition-and-crime-control-willem-de.html)//JuneC//
ABOLITIONISM ABOUT 'CRIME' The current approach to crime control, the definition
of crime and
the justification of punishment is 'systemic', that is, based on an instrumentalist point of
view and confined within the limits of the criminal justice system. From an abolitionist
point of view, these issues require a fundamental reconceptualization in a broader
social context. This is where the alternative, positive side of abolitionism starts from. Abolitionists argue that there is no
such thing as 'crime'. In fact, 'the very form of criminal law, with its conception of "crime" (not just the contents of what is at a given
time and place defined into that category, but the category itself) and the ideas on what is to be done about it, are historical
"inventions'" (Steinert, ll'S6: 26). 'Crime' is a social construction, to be analysed as a myth of
everyday life (Hess, 1986). As a myth, crime serves to maintain political power relations
and lends legitimacy to the expansion of the crime control apparatus and the
intensification of surveillance and control. It justifies inequality and relative deprivation.
Public attention is distracted from more serious problems and injustices. Thus, the bigger
the social problems are, the greater the need for the crime myth (Hess, 1986: 24-5). However,
not only should the concept of crime be discarded (Hulsman, 1986), but we need to get rid of the theories of crime as well. As
Quensel (1987) has pointed out, theories about 'crime' acquire their plausibility largely by virtue of their building on and, at the same
time, reinforcing an already-present 'deep structure'. One element of this 'deep structure' is the notion that 'crime' is inherently
dangerous and wicked; another is that crime control is a 'value-inspired' call for action against that evil (p. 129). Abolitionists
argue that the crucial problem is not explaining but rather understanding crime as a social
event. Thus, what we need is not a better theory of crime, hut a more powerful critique of
crime. This is not to deny that there are all sorts of unfortunate events, more or less serious troubles or conflicts which can result
in suffering, harm, or damage to a greater or lesser degree. These troubles are to he taken seriously, of course, but not as 'crimes'
and, in any case, they should not be dealt with by means of criminal law. When we fully appreciate the complexity
of a 'crime' as a socially constructed phenomenon any simplified reaction to crime in the
form of punishment becomes problematic. Spector (1981) has argued that when a person offends, disturbs, or
injures other people, various forms of social disapproval exist to remedy the situation. The matter may be treated as a disease, a sin,
or, indeed, as a crime. However, other responses are also feasible, like considering the case as a private conflict between the offender
and the victim or defining the situation in an administrative way and responding, for example by denial of a licence, permit, benefit
or compensation. Our images, language, categories, knowledge, beliefs and fears of troublemakers are subject to constant changes.
Nevertheless, crime continues to occupy a central place in our thinking about troublesome people ( I ^S I: I S4). Spector suggests
that, perhaps, 'we pay too much attention to crime because the disciplines that study trouble and disapprove - sociology and
criminology - were born precisely in the era when crime was at its zenith? (Quenscl, 1987; Spector, 1981). The concept of
'crime' figures prominently in common sense and has definite effects on it. By focusing
public attention on a definite class of events, these 'crimes' can then be almost
automatically seen as meriting punitive control. 'Punishment' is thereby regarded as the
obvious and proper reaction to 'crime'. ABOLITIONISM ABOUT PUNISHMENT Abolitionists do not
share the current belief in the criminal law's capacity for crime control. They radically
deny the utility of punishment and claim that there can be no valid justification for it,
particularly since other options are available for law enforcement. They discard criminal
justice as an absurd idea. It is ridiculous to claim that one pain can or, indeed, ought to be
compensated by another state-inflicted one. According to them, the 'prison solution'
affects the moral quality of life in society at large. Therefore, the criminal justice
perspective needs to be replaced by an orientation towards all avoidance of harm and pain
(Steinert, 1986: 25). Christie (1982), particularly, has attacked the traditional justifications for punishment. He criticizes deterrence
theory for its sloppy definitions of concepts, its immunity to challenge, and for the fact that it gives the routine process of
punishment a false legitimacy in an epoch where the infliction of pain might otherwise have appeared problematic. The neo-
classicism of the justice model is also criticized: punishment is justified and objectified, the
criminal is blamed, the victim is ignored, a broad conception of justice is lacking, and a
'hidden message' is transmitted which denies legitimacy to a whole series of alternatives
which should, in fact, be taken into consideration. However, Christie not only criticizes the 'supposed
justifications' for punishment, but also claims a decidedly moral position with regard to punishment, which is the intentional
infliction of pain which he calls 'moral rigorism'. He deliberately co-opts the terms 'moralism' and 'rigorism' associated primarily
with protagonists of 'law and order' and more severe penal sanctions. His 'rigorist' position, however, is that there is no reason to
believe that the recent level of pain infliction is the right or natural one and that there is no other defensible position than to strive
for a reduction of man-inflicted pain on earth. Since punishment is defined as pain, limiting pain means an automatic reduction of
punishment. More recently, Christie and Mathiesen have both suggested that the expansion of the prison system involves general
ethical and political questions such as what could be the effects of all the punishments taken together? What would constitute an
acceptable level of punishment in society? What would be the right prison population within a country? 1 low should we treat fellow
human beings? And. last but not least, how do we want to meet the crime problem (Christie, 1986; Mathiesen, 1986)? However,
in common-sense and legal discourse alike, 'crime' and 'punishment' continue to be seen
'as independent species - without reference to their sameness or how continuity of both
depends on the character of dominating institutions' (Kennedy, 1974: 107). It should be kept in mind,
however, that crime comprises but one of several kinds of all norm violations, that punishment is but one of many kinds of reprisals
against such violations, that criteria for separating them refer to phenomena external to actual behaviours classed by legal procedure
as crime versus punishment, and that even within the criminal law itself, the criteria by which crime is identified procedural!)- apply
with equal validity to punishment (Kennedy. I974: 108). Criminology needs to rid itself of those theories of
punishment which assume there are universal qualities in forms of punishment or assume
a straightforward connection between crime and punishment. Given the perseverance of
this conventional notion of 'punishment' as essentially a 'good' against an 'evil', any effort
at changing common-sense notions of 'crime' and 'crime control' requires a
reconceptualization of both concepts: 'crime' and 'punishment'.
When I tell people that I am an abolitionist, they tend to get a bit confused. After all,
slavery was abolished with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, way back in 1865,
right? Then I provide clarification... I believe in the abolition of the prison system.
Prisons make rehabilitation and preventive justice impossible, which are better
strategies for reducing crime
Gobry 5/7 (Pascal-Emmanuel. a writer and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His writing has appeared at Forbes,
The Atlantic, First Things, Commentary Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Federalist, Quartz, and other places. “Abolish Prison”. 7
May 2015. The Week. http://theweek.com/articles/553661/abolish-prison)//JuneC//
Prison is just about the most astonishingly stupid and inhuman way to punish crime. It is
inexplicable that it is the main crime punishment tool we use. Typically, the answer I get
when I say this (which is often) is, "What's your alternative?" The alternatives are
plentiful, and easy, and all better. But, first, let me dwell a little bit on why prison is so awful. Prison is an
incredibly stupid way to fight crime because, as is well known, it is the enemy of
rehabilitation. In prison, criminal gangs flourish. This means prison becomes a
graduate school for crime, a facility for turning mediocre criminals into hardened ones.
More generally, who thinks locking people in places where they are fed and housed and boxed up and surrounded only by other
dysfunctional people is going to turn them into productive members of society? The idea would be laughable if it wasn't part of the
status quo. Prison, by its very design, breeds crime and social dysfunction. And of course, it is
impossible to talk about prison without talking about the prison rape epidemic . Can there be
anything more abject than a society whose police-procedural TV shows include prison rape jokes — and nobody is outraged?
Everyone knows that it goes on. Everybody knows that it's endemic. Lock up a bunch of men in tight quarters, without access to
females. Many of the men are violent, over-testosteroned, and dysfunctional. What will happen? And we joke about it. On those
grounds alone, the entire system deserves to be scrapped. Maybe these problems are just from lack of reform? Maybe we just
need to fund prisons more, to make the way they work better, to set up more rehabilitation
programs. Sorry, that won't work. Prison doesn't suck because of historical accident. It
sucks because of structural political reasons. In a democracy, an interest group gets attention and funding
from the government in proportion to its numerical size and public sympathy level. The one group that will never be
big enough, and certainly never popular enough, to get good treatment are prisoners.
Because of the way the political system works, prisoners will never be able to get the
political capital to get the reforms that might (might!) in theory make prisons not awful.
We all live in Omelas. MORE PERSPECTIVES MARC AMBINDER What Trump got right about McCain JEFF SPROSS The Apple
view of the economy Prisons are also contrary to the values of liberty that any civilized society ought to aspire to. As the French
writer Michel Foucault argued in his landmark essay Discipline and Punish, prison is a historical oddity that arose as a result of the
modern state's increasing ability and eagerness to control more and more of its citizens' lives. Well-meaning modernist
reformists believed the way to set the crooked timber of man straight was through
institutions that would, well, discipline and punish — schools, military barracks, prisons.
It's no coincidence that the celebrated progressive Enlightenment thinker Jeremy
Bentham is also the author of the Panopticon concept, one of the creepiest ideas in all
history. Prison has to go. The comeback is inevitable: "Then what's your alternative, smart guy?" The
alternatives are actually countless, and all better. But it all depends on the kind of crime
we're talking about. For petty crime, the obvious answer is community service. It's real punishment, without the inhumane
and crime-breeding drawbacks of prison. The work of community service should be geared toward reparation: For example, if you've
been caught doing graffiti, you should clean graffiti; if you've been driving drunk, you should embalm corpses of people who died in
car accidents. And if all fails, there is always the lash or the cane — easy, quick, much less destructive. For more serious crimes, ankle
bracelets. Did you kill someone in a fit of passion or drunk rage? Then instead of spending three years in prison, you should spend
six years working minimum wage in a tedious job, your wages garnished, stuck at home with no internet or TV, with only a single
night out allowed once in a while. That is real punishment — but punishment that does not have unacceptable moral costs. As for the
very serious crimes — well, I used to think the awfulness of prison was reason to support the death penalty. Now, I tend to think that
prison might be acceptable for a very small percentage of crimes. If we have five percent the number of prisoners we currently have,
I would be very happy. In any case, the point should be clear: We can abolish prison — and we must.
Prison systems can’t deter crime and lead to recidivism
Nagin 13 (Daniel S. Carnegie Mellon University Author of Deterrence Theory and Research. “Deterrence. Scaring Offenders
Straight”. SagePub. 2013. http://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/40354_4.pdf)//JuneC//
DOES IMPRISONMENT DETER? When Cullen was a criminological pup—just starting out in the field—he read a fascinating book
by Gordon Hawkins (1976) called The Prison, which contained a fascinating chapter called “The Effects of Imprisonment.” Hawkins
criticized the easy acceptance by virtually all criminologists that institutions were schools of crime and that inmates all suffered
prisonization. Yet he also rejected the notion that prisons somehow reduced criminal propensities. While “inmates are not being
corrupted,” concluded Hawkins, “neither their attitudes nor their behavior are being affected in any significant fashion by the
experience of imprisonment” (pp. 72–73). With some qualifications added, the gist of his message was that prisons may not have
much of an enduring effect on offenders’ future criminality. Cullen thought that this was an intriguing possibility and, as inmate
populations expanded, he waited for a wealth of empirical studies assessing this null effect conclusion reached by Hawkins. And he
waited, and waited, and waited. Somewhat shockingly, although criminologists continued to decry prisons and assume that they had
bad effects on people’s lives—something Cullen wanted to believe—they did not conduct much research to confirm this belief. Did it
really matter, though, that criminologists felt comfortable believing, but not empirically validating, their prisons-asschools-of-crime
ideology? It did for one important reason: Policy makers from across the nation did not
share this view. In particular, many conservative legislators thought that
incarcerating offenders was a neat idea because it would scare bad people into acting
like good people. If criminologists had presented compelling evidence that this was not the case, it might have curbed this
insatiable appetite to lock up more and more people. Over the years, Cullen kept an eye out for studies that
might provide data on the effects of imprisonment. Then, in 1993, Sampson and Laub published their classic
book, Crime in the Making. They had found data originally collected by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck
in the subbasement of the Harvard Law School library, which followed Deterrence 95
1,000 boys born in the 1930s’ Boston area for nearly two decades (starting in 1939– 1940).
Sampson and Laub reconstructed and reanalyzed the data, with their main interest devoted to understanding what led some, but not
other, boys to follow a criminal life course. Embedded in their larger study, however, Cullen found an
assessment of what happened when boys were sent to prison, controlling for all other
factors. Importantly, Sampson and Laub discovered that serving time in prison
weakened conventional social bonds (e.g., to quality marriage and work), which in turn
increased recidivism. In short, imprisonment did not deter; this experience was
criminogenic. A 2002 study by Cassia Spohn and David Holleran reached a similar conclusion. Using 1993 data from
offenders convicted of felonies in Jackson County, Missouri (which contains Kansas City), they compared the recidivism rates of 776
offenders placed on probation versus 301 offenders sent to prison. They followed offenders for 48 months. Here are their
major findings: · Being sent to prison increased recidivism. · Those sent to prison
reoffended more quickly than those placed on probation. · The criminogenic effect of
prison was especially high for drug offenders, who were five to six times more likely to
recidivate than those placed on probation. These findings are not limited to the United
States. Thus, questions about the deterrent effects of prisons also are raised by Paula Smith’s (2006) study of 5,469 male
offenders in the Canadian federal penitentiary system. Smith discovered that imprisonment increased recidivism among low-risk
offenders. Similarly, in a study that compared first-time inmates with a matched sample of non-imprisoned offenders in the
Netherlands, Nieuwbeerta, Nagin, and Blokland (2009) found that imprisonment increased recidivism over three years. A limited
number of literature reviews of existing studies on prison effects have been conducted, including one that Cullen and Jonson
published with Daniel Nagin, who headed up the project (Nagin, Cullen, & Jonson, 2009; see also Gendreau et al., 2000; Smith,
Goggin, & Gendreau, 2002; Villetez, Killias, & Zoder, 2006). Most notably, Jonson (2010) herself recently conducted a
comprehensive meta-analysis of published and unpublished investigations of the effects of imprisonment on recidivism—85 studies,
which is a lot of work! It is difficult to reach definitive conclusions because of the lack of studies using random experimental designs.
Still, no matter who did them or what strategy for synthesizing findings was used, the clear
consensus of the reviews is that imprisonment versus a non-custodial sanction either has
a null effect or slightly increases recidivism. The policy implications of this growing body of research are
quite important. As economist Levitt (2002) notes, “it is critical to the deterrence hypothesis that longer prison sentences be
associated with reductions in crime” (p. 443). When such critical evidence cannot be found—as is the
case
here—it is time to rethink deterrence theory. One final possibility exists: Maybe it is not prison per se, but
being in a prison that has particularly harsh living conditions. Maybe we have to make inmates suffer to make
them realize the folly of reoffending. No country clubs, just dungeons ! 96 CORRECTIONAL
THEORY Admittedly, the evidence here is scarce. But, again, the studies that do exist report results contrary to the
predictions of deterrence theory. Research reported by economists Chen and Shapiro (2007) explored whether inmates sentenced to
easier prison conditions (minimum security level) or harsher prison conditions (higher security level) within the Federal Bureau of
Prisons were more likely to recidivate. They concluded that harsher prison conditions did not
reduce recidivism and, “if anything . . . may lead to more post-release crime” (2007, p. 1).
Drago, Galbiati, and Vertova (2008) report similar results with Italian inmates, finding no evidence that harsher living conditions
decrease recidivism. Let us drive home this point with one final example. In Maricopa County, Arizona (home of Phoenix), Sheriff
Joe Arpaio has earned national attention for his administration of the county jails. He is a conservative’s dream correctional official,
keeping costs at a minimum while creating harsh living conditions for offenders. Many inmates live in tents and thus are exposed to
the extreme Arizona summer heat. He dresses them in pink underwear and striped uniforms. They work on chain gangs. Television
is limited to the Disney and Weather channels. His philosophy is that discipline and discomfort will teach offenders a lesson and
deter their offending. As Sheriff Arpaio proudly asserts in his autobiography, carrying the subtitle America’s Toughest Sheriff:
Most—and I mean 70 percent—choose to learn nothing, choose to keep breaking the law,
choose to keep returning to jail. If all those inmates who comprise the 70 percent are just too stupid or corrupted or
just plain vicious to go straight for their own good or the good of their families, then maybe my jails will convince a few, or maybe
more than a few, to obey the law and get an honest job just to stay out of the tents and away from the green bologna. (Arpaio &
Sherman, 1996, p. 50) As he continues about his jail’s tough regimen: That might sound harsh to you. I don’t know. If it sounds
harsh, that’s all right, because jail is a harsh place. Jail is not a reward or an achievement, it is punishment. Amazingly, much of
society seems to have forgotten that unvarnished reality. If you’ve ever visited my jails, tent or hard facility variety, you know I
haven’t forgotten. I promise the people I never will. (Arpaio & Sherman, 1996, p. 51) Sheriff Arpaio was so confident in the deterrent
powers of his jail that he enlisted Arizona State University criminologists John Hepburn and Marie Griffin (1998) to conduct an
evaluation of his practices. A random assignment experiment was not possible, but a comparison could be made of jail inmates’
recidivism before and after Sheriff Arpaio took office and instituted his get tough living conditions. As Hepburn and Griffin noted
(1998), the key research question was this: “To what extent do recent changes in the policies and programs that affect the conditions
of confinement in the jail add to the deterrent effect of detention?” (p. 6). After reading this chapter, we suspect you can predict what
the study found. The first problem for Sheriff Arpaio is the high recidivism rate of his jail population. As Hepburn and Griffin (1998)
report, “within 30 months following release from jail, Deterrence 97 61.8% of the offenders
studied were rearrested for some new offense and 55.2% of the offenders studied were
rearrested for a felony offense” (p. 38). No magic bullet cure for recidivism was found. The
second problem for Sheriff Arpaio was that the recidivism rate before and after he implemented his regimen remained virtually the
same. As Hepburn and Griffin concluded, “there is no indication here that the policies and programs recently initiated by the Sheriff
’s Office add to the deterrent effect of detention” (p. 40). Sheriff Arpaio’s hubris about his correctional theory was undaunted by
these data. So much for evidence-based corrections. But why should he change? We are certain he passionately believes in what he
does. The electorate seems to love him, reelecting him without worry and repeatedly. He also has a national reputation (Arpaio &
Sherman, 1996, 2008). His treatment of offenders is celebrated and often seen as amusing, especially the tent city and the pink
underwear. Ha! Ha! What is not appreciated—what is not so funny—is the potentially high cost of running a jail based on a
correctional theory with limited empirical support. What if Sheriff Arpaio had used his charisma, his organizational skills, and
political acumen to implement correctional practices supported by the evidence? How many offenders’ lives might he have saved?
How many victimizations might he have prevented? What a shame.
Keeping the prisons in place is substantially worse than abolition
Hand-Boniakowski 2k (Jeanne E. he graduated from Castleton State College, Castleton, VT in May 1990 with an
Associates Degree in Nursing. “THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX PRISON ABOLITION”. August 2000. Metaphoria.
http://www.metaphoria.org/issues/99vol7/ac4t0008.html)//JuneC//
When I say I am a prison abolitionist, people look at me aghast and cry “What are you,
crazy? You can’t let them out, society will be torn apart, thousands of people will be raped,
murdered mugged!” They look at me and smirk, “You are such a stupid, liberal, bleeding
heart do-gooder. You have no clue, get real.” They look at me angry:”You care more about
criminals than victims!” They look at me quizically: “Well, if people are in prison, they’re
there for a reason. That’s their punishment; we have to have consequences, have to punish
lawbreakers.” I am a prison abolitionist because the price is simply too high. From any
angle, by any measurement, the price of prisons is too high: morally, legally,
democratically, financially, psychologically, spiritually; for those both inside and out; for
“criminals” and “victims”; for the elite and the rest of us. I don’t believe prisons can be reformed to a
point of acceptability. The concept of reform tears at me because, while some changes may
alleviate some of the pain for some of the people in some of the cages, prison by its very
nature requires brutality and contempt. Are Americans really so desensitized to the pain of
others? Perhaps they are psychologically distanced from people whom they have placed in
a separate box in their mind, a box labeled “criminals” or maybe just “bad guys”, alien
creatures viewed with hatred, scorn and fear. How else can the majority of Americans stand by while Amnesty
International releases its first report on torture in the USA, torture that is a growing aspect of our police and penal practices? The
indoctrination of social studies classes, bolstered by patriotic rhetoric from advertising to 4th of July parades, has soaked psyches
with the assumption that, flawed we may be but we are a nation that leads the world through two centuries as a beacon of justice and
goodness. This seeming instinct to patriotism is actually no instinct but a conditioned response, and it colors our collective and
individual thought and action broadly. A SUNDAY DRIVE One Sunday in June, I drove home by a different route so I could pass the
huge human warehouse called Great Meadows, a pastoral name for a medieval fortress with a medieval-modern purpose. Crossing
the New York State Canal into Comstock, a tired looking tavern, Sebastian’s Sports Lounge, is on my left, owning the same sad air of
any rural neighborhood bar, with bright beer ad neons washed out in the late spring sunlight. Across Rt.22 stretches a mile of fence,
the outer perimeter of the compound that is the prison. There are fences inside of fences, and further in, the scarier the fences are,
bristling with high voltage possibility and glittering with coiled razor wire. Guard towers, tiny windows, tons of brick and steel, this is
an enormous structure, with stolid adjacent buildings and hodgepodge extensions growing out of it. The haphazardness of the
outgrowths resembles cancer, and so I realize that the treatment course may be similar: Excision (excarcerate, decarcerate),
Chemotherapy (massive doses of medical care, including psychiatric treatment, cognitive therapy, addiction treatment), Nutrition
(feed everyone with food, jobs, justice, education), Prevention (a healthy society), Community (to belong to and to give to) , Love
(self-love and love of others), re-evaluation of Purpose (turn the prison into a school, a factory, a library, a theatre, a museum and a
gym; turn the outbuildings and warden’s mansion into affordable housing). Slowly I cruise by, first one way then the other. I park in
Sebastian’s until the tears clear and I can see to drive. How many men “live” in that monolith? How many years, lives, minds, artists,
lovers, fathers, sons, citizens, slaves, tears, rages are wasted here? As I drive south on 22, a white van passes north, and I wonder if
it’s one of the white charter vans that ferry visitors to the prison. These vans and buses are usually carrying women of color, mothers
and wives and girlfriends from the boroughs of New York City. It is ironic that when a young “white” man from the metropolis says
he’s going “upstate”, it is usually to college at RPI or Cornell or St.Lawrence or any of the many schools scattered in the hills of the
Empire State. Yet if a young man of color says he’s going “upstate”, it often means to prison at Comstock or Dannemora or Monroe
or any of the many prisons scattered in the hills of the Empire State. Not far from Great Meadows I passed a home business sign,
“The Yellow Ribbon”. I have no idea what the business is, but I remember how yellow ribbons around trees are signs of hope and
welcome to released prisoners. I hope the place is a halfway house and not a hair salon. From sparse high branches, a bald eagle lifts
out and tracks south along the highway. It is an adult, bearing the classic plumage that stirs well-learned associations of patriotism.
For good or ill, my reaction to those associations is colored by my knowledge; I see this strong and stunning bird, bastardized into an
icon of ideological empire. The awareness that his image actually inspires in many Americans an honest hope and belief in freedom
and democracy only heightens my cynicism as he soars high enough to see the prison. I fantasize that he is a spirit bird, or a vehicle
for some local Mahican shaman, his clear and concise gaze informing a mind fully aware of the irony and tragedy of the tableau.
Where might a poem about a bald eagle flying above the prison lead? With little force, and little art, one could write a hopeful verse,
to inspire prisoners and democrats alike with noble sentimentality. But I know that if I let the poem in this picture carry itself,
without the force of my hopefulness, simply stating its own honest lines, that I will be depressed to the place flatter than tears.
THOUGHTS OUTSIDE THE BOX "This type of statute does not render justice. This type of statute
denies the judges of this court, and of all courts, the right to bring their conscience,
experience, discretion and sense of what is just into the sentencing procedure, and in
effect, makes a judge computer, automatically imposing sentence without regard to what is
right and just." Judge Franklin Billings, Senior Judge for the District of Vermont, on mandatory minimum sentences (MMS).
"What you are saying is that the law is not fair and you are right. The law is not fair. The Sentencing Reform Act that created these
guidelines and the minimum sentences that Congress has put into effect are outrageous." The judge continued, "It offends me deeply
to have to follow the law and I never thought that I would have to say that. But I must follow the law. I am sworn to do that. If I don’t
follow the law, these lawyers will take the case to the Court of Appeals and make me follow the law. I don’t feel that I have any choice
under the Sentencing Reform Act." Judge Norman Black, District Court Judge for the Southern District of Texas , on MMS. “We
must destroy the prison, root and branch. That will not solve our problem, but it will be a good beginning…Let us substitute
something. Almost anything will be an improvement. It can not be worse. It cannot be more brutal and useless.” Frank
Tannenbaum, 1938. “The American prison system makes no sense. Prisons have failed as deterrents to crime. They have failed as
rehabilitative institutions. What then shall we do? Let us face it! Prisons should be abolished. The prison cannot be reformed. It rests
on false premises. Nothing can improve it. It will never be anything but a graveyard of good intentions. Prison is not just the enemy
of the prisoner. It is the enemy of society.” John Bartlow 1954. “The prison, as now tolerated, is a constant
threat to everyone’s security. An anachronistic relic of medieval concepts of crime and
punishment.; it not only does not cure the problem, it perpetuates and multiplies it. We
profess to rely on prison for our safety; yet it is directly responsible for much of the
damage that society that society suffers at the hands of offenders. On the basis of my own
experience, I am convinced that prisons must be abolished .” Ralph Benay 1955 (formerly in charge of the
psychiatric clinic at Sing Sing). “I am persuaded that the institution of prison probably must end. In many respects it is as intolerable
within the United States as was the institution of slavery, equally brutalizing to all involved, equally toxic to the social system,
equally subversive to the brotherhood of man, even more costly by some standards, and probably less rational.” Federal Judge
James Doyle 1972. “We need to create an atmosphere in which abolition can take place. It will
require a firm alliance between those groups, individuals and organizations which
understand that this will not happen overnight. Just as the slavery abolitionist movement
extended over decades, we must be prepared to struggle at length. But we must start, we
must fuel the fires…” John Boone 1976 (former Commissioner of Corrections, Massachusetts). “One of the most difficult and
one of the most ignored of our social problems is the problem of prisons- a problem which might be ameliorated through drastic
prison reform, but which can be solved only through the abolition of prisons….The advocacy of prison abolition implies simply that
other courses of action, including, sometimes, doing nothing at all, are preferable to imprisonment.” David S. Greenberg. “There
ought to be no jails; and if it were not for the fact that the people on the outside are so grasping and heartless in their dealings with
the people on the inside. There would be no such institutions as jails…the only way in the world to abolish crime and criminals is to
abolish the big ones and the little ones together. Make fair the conditions of life. Give men a chance to live…Nobody would steal if he
could get something of his own some easier way. Nobody will commit burglary when he has a house full. The only way to cure these
conditions is by equality. There should be no jails. Hey do not accomplish what they pretend to accomplish. If you could wipe them
out there would be no more criminals than now…They are a blot upon any civilization, and a jail is evidence of the lack of charity of
the people on the outside who make the jails and fill them with the victims of their greed.” Clarence Darrow 1902 (Address to the
prisoners in Cook County Jail, Chicago). “After a single night at the Nevada State Prison, for example, 23 judges from all over the
U.S. emerged ‘appalled’, shaken by the inmates ‘soul-shattering bitterness’ and upset by ‘men raving, screaming and pounding on
the walls.’ Judge E. Newton Vickers (Kansas) summed up, ‘I felt like an animal in a cage. Ten years in there must be like 100 or
maybe 200’ Vickers urged Nevada to ‘send two bulldozers out there and tear the damn thing to the ground.’ Time magazine, “The
Shame of Prisons” Jan 18, 1971.
No link – PIC produces as many, if not more, new criminals
McSpadden 8 (Laura. Staff Writer. “Prison abolition: Not only does it matter, it makes sense”. Oak Leaves. Manchester
University. 2008. http://www.manchester.edu/OSD/OakLeaves/archives/Issue_18/prison.htm)//JuneC//
In 2007, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released figures that confirmed that the United
States incarcerated 751 of every 100,000 residents; this is more people per capita than any
other of the countries that were studied. This rate is even higher than in countries with stuggling political systems
and poor human rights histories, such as Iran (212:100,000), Libya (217:100,000) and China (119:100,000). This
situation is
made even more unsettling by the fact that the prison system is filled with people who have
either plea-bargained or been convicted within the structures of the U. S. justice system, a
system which is to this day steeped in racial and economic biases. For example, a study conducted by
the National Council on Crime and Juvenile Delinquency in 2000 revealed that “minority youth are treated much more harshly than
white youth at each stage of the U. S. criminal justice system....When minority and white youth were charged with the same offenses,
black youth who had no prior arrest record were six times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth with similar backgrounds.
Hispanic youth were three times more likely to be incarcerated....” Another study, issued by the Washington D. C. Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights revealed that “black youth were 100 times more likely to be arrested for selling drugs than white youth,
although drug use rates among black youth appear to be about equal those of white youth,” and noted that “blacks who killed whites
were sentenced to death 22 times more frequently than blacks who killed blacks and seven times more frequently than whites who
killed blacks.” These facts reveal a chilling secret: the U. S. justice system continues to
perpetuate the long-standing myth that America was built upon, that white people’s lives
are worth more than the lives of blacks and other minorities. And this is the so-called
“justice” system that determines who will make up the population of U. S. prisons. The
Human Rights Watch points out the consequences of this state of affairs in its report
“Incarcerated America.” “The high and disproportionate rate of minority incarceration…
exposes and deepens the racial fault lines that weaken the country; contradicts principles
of justice and equal protection of the laws; and undermines faith among all races in the
fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system.” Furthermore, the justice system is undeniably biased
towards those who can afford more experienced and effective legal council. Many impoverished and innocent individuals elect to
plea-bargain for a reduced sentence due to their fear of what effective council could cost or because of their correctly-placed
cynicism regarding their chance for a truly fair and impartial trial. The prison system thereby becomes a
holding-cell for those who have experienced American injustice the most intimately,
keeping them disenfranchised and denied of many of the rights of democracy. In such a
case, it is ethically questionable to assert that the ends justify the means. Furthermore, the ends of
this situation cannot even be described as effective. Although prisons are ostensibly “correctional facilities,” they fail miserably in
providing corrective measures that would allow for the healing and rehabilitation of convicted criminals. Calvin Malone, a prisoner
in Washington State, has written several books about his experiences in state penitentiaries. He tells about trying to find peace
amongst his fellow prisoners, many of whom are “notorious for sexually and physically assaulting the vulnerable.” In fact, the
Bureau of Justice Statistics has determined that in the course of one calendar year, more than 70,000 U. S. prisoners were sexually
abused by either their fellow inmates or by the prison staff. In Connecticut, prison staff are allowed to use dogs “to terrify and attack
and bite prisoners to force them to leave their cells when they won’t do so voluntarily,” according to Human Rights Watch and an
article published in the New Haven Register. The American Civil Liberties Union has documented numerous cases of girls in the
New York juvenile detention centers being sexually abused and harassed by the staff of the prisons. That is hardly the sort of
environment that would enable those among us who have fallen into realms of violence and fear to correct themselves. One of the
reasons prison recidivism is so high is that many individuals convicted of non-violent offenses are eventually released after having
endured months or years of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, angrier and more damaged than when they went in. Another
source of prison recidivism is found amongst those whose original conviction was the result of illegal activities motivated by the need
to survive while immersed in poverty– namely, petty theft and prostitution. If they are not provided with the tools of correction such
as counseling and education, they will experience even greater difficulty in finding gainful employment as a result of their
conviction, and the cycle will continue. In fact, despite increasing prison populations, crime has
not dropped over time. Is it possible that, by subjecting violent individuals to sustained
levels of further abuse, we are creating a self-defeating downward spiral towards an ever
more fearful and violent society? Angela Davis, one of the pioneers of the prison abolition movement, emphasizes
that that the abolition of prison is a long-term goal that will involve a massive amount of social reform along the way, including a
basic restructuring of how we as a culture perceive crime.The author finds inspiration from the activism of Angela Davis. Here they
are pictured together following Davis' keynote address at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in February of 2008. Photo
by Ally O'Neill “In order to imagine a world without prisons... a new popular vocabulary will
have to replace the current language, which articulates crime and punishment in such a
way that we cannot think about a society without crime except as a society in which all the
criminals are imprisoned,” Davis said. “Thus, one of the first challenges is to be able to talk
about the many ways in which punishment is linked to poverty, racism, sexism,
homophobia and other modes of dominance.” Such a reframe, which acknowledges and takes responsibility for
the social causes of crime, would lead to a re-channeling of the billions of dollars that currently go into the prison system into
community-based economic resources, educational services, community forums for dispute resolution, medical and mental health
care, rehabilitation systems and community services for adults and children– a conglomeration of services that would deserve the
term “correctional facilities” in a way that prisons never will. Quite frankly, I am not comfortable with the fact that the society to
which I belong condones an industry that promotes and spreads suffering. Whether it be by becoming involved with a prison pen-pal
program, writing to your elected representatives, volunteering for a community-based outreach program or rehabilitation center,
educating people about the realities of the prison system (which, incidentally, we condone and fund with our tax dollars), or any
number of other ways, I encourage all to speak up for those who have had their voices silenced.
Psychology flows aff – penal systems replicate hostility
Singer 70 (Barry F. psychologist at the University of California at Long Beach. “Psychological Studies of Punishment”. March
1970. California Law Review.
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2729&context=californialawreview)//JuneC//
Extensive experimental investigation of delay of punishment has shown that the
effectiveness of punishment diminishes as it is administered from zero to five seconds
after a behavior. After this point, its effectiveness in suppressing behavior drops off quite sharply, reaching a minimum at
about 30 seconds, where, however, there is still some residual effect."' These results seem to hold true for humans as well as for
animals37 The crucial question for criminological purposes is: Why is punishment less effective after longer delays? Is delaying
a punishment similar to decreasing its certainty or to decreasing its severity? Church 8 showed
that increasing the "certainty" of a delayed punishment by providing a continuous noise signal bridging the gap from behavior to
punishment did not increase its effectiveness, although behavior was suppressed during the signal itself. As we therefore
cannot account for the loss of effectiveness of delayed punishment in terms of its similarity
to decreased certainty, it is likely that delaying a punishment has an effect equivalent to
decreasing its severity. We also know that, as punishment is delayed, it is more difficult to
produce effective differences in severity. 9 Some of this experimental work needs to be verified and extended, but
the above principles are better than tentative guesses. When the concern is suppression of a behavioral act more complex than
simple bar pressing, it is more effective to punish the be- ginning stages of the act than to punish it when it is well under way or just
completed.40 The former produces an organism that seldom re- peats the act, but shows no anxiety after he does, whereas the latter
procedure produces an organism that will repeat the act often, even though it will manifest guilt and anxiety thereafter. The former
is presumably preferable. Clearly the above findings indicate that our present system of
punishments should be inadequate. We do not usually inflict penalties within seconds
of a criminal act, but after months or even years of waiting and legal proceedings. We
would predict that such penalties would have little effect on behavior. Moreover, as Eysenck
and others have pointed out, the material rewards for crime are usually immediate, in contrast to the punishment's delay, and
immediate rewards will influence organisms more than delayed punishments
Experimental psychology is a good method for analyzing the effect of incarceration
Singer 70 (Barry F. psychologist at the University of California at Long Beach. “Psychological Studies of Punishment”. March
1970. California Law Review.
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2729&context=californialawreview)//JuneC//
Experimental models of punishment situations are very simple and hence both basic and
general. Typically an experimenter uses rewards, usually food, to induce an organism to
perform a simple act, such as pressing a bar or running down an alley. When this behavior
is well-learned, he punishes the organism by administering some aversive condition
during or after the act, and he measures the effects of the punishment by the future
frequency or strength of the behavior. Sometimes he withdraws the reward when the punishment is administered.
This is termed punishment under "extinction." Information derived from such studies is potentially applicable
wherever punishment is used or phenomena resulting from the use of punishment are dealt with. Thus, the information
should have applications in such diverse areas as animal training, criminal behavior and
penology, child rearing, and clinical psychology. In some respects the laboratory models resemble animal
training-since animals are usually used for experimental subjects-and child rearing-since common types of punishing stimuli are
used in both situations. With respect to the focus of concern, however, the experimental models
are most similar to criminal behavior and penology in that in both instances the focus is on
the suppression of behavior, whereas punishment is likely to be used for other purposes in
child rearing and animal training. Perhaps the most serious difference between the punishment of criminals and
laboratory models of punishment lies in the punishing stimuli used. We punish criminals by fines or by incarceration, whereas
laboratory organisms usually receive short, intense stimuli, such as electric shock, slaps, or loud noises. It is difficult to assess the
importance of this difference. We do know that different types of punishment generally do not alter the laboratory laws of
punishment: Punishing stimuli such as slaps, buzzers, confinement in a box, shocks of different durations and intensities, and
removal from the vicinity of reward, which include some fair analogues of incarceration, all produce about the same experimental
results even when more than one punishment is used for the same organism in the same experiment." We can probably
assume that our present experimental laboratory laws will prove valid for incarceration,
although we know little about the dimensions of incarceration itself. Incarceration for six months may be much more potent in its
effects than a one-month sentence, but variations in duration of confinement after six months may represent only small changes on
a scale of severity; or the reverse may be true. We have no pertinent knowledge. Experimental studies of
punishment are obviously most applicable to criminal behaviors that, like the laboratory
behaviors, are acquired through a simple reinforcement process, are repetitive, and are
maintained because they are the most accessible routes to material rewards. We need not
be directly concerned here with theories of the genesis of criminal behavior. Some theories
explain criminal behavior in terms of simple learning-reinforcement models.' No doubt some criminal behavior develops in precisely
this way; no doubt much of it does not. It seems likely that property crimes, which comprise the bulk of offenses, are more
susceptible to learning theory explanations and to applications of information derived from punishment studies than are "crimes of
passion," such as assault. What is perhaps more important for our purposes is to recognize that
punishments are similarly administered for crimes of passion and property crimes, so that
general principles of punishment ought somehow to be relevant to the former as well as to
the latter. In some cases the motivation for criminal behavior may interact with the punishment administered.'
Statistics flow aff – 86% of inmates in federal prisons are incarcerated for
victimless crime, which begs the question of what constitutes “crime” in the first
place
Suede 11 (Michael. Michael Suede is an Austrian economist and author who holds a business degree from the University of
Wisconsin. “Victimless Crime Constitutes 86% of The Federal Prison Population”. Libertarian News. 29 September 2011.
https://www.libertariannews.org/2011/09/29/victimless-crime-constitutes-86-of-the-american-prison-population)//JuneC//
When we talk about the war on drugs, which is increasingly turning into a real war, we
often overlook the fact that the “criminals” involved in the drug trade aren’t actually
violating anyone’s rights. When a drug dealer is hauled before a judge, there is no victim
standing behind the prosecutor claiming damages. Everyone participating in the drug
trade does so voluntarily. However, there are a lot more crimes for which this is also true.
Millions upon millions of Americans have been thrown into cages without a victim ever
claiming damages. It is important to look at the burden this mass level of incarceration
places upon our society. In light of that, let us review some statistics which demonstrate just how destructive the mass
incarceration of victimless criminals has become to our society. The 2011 federal prison population consisted
of: Drugs 50.7% Public-order 35.0%, Violent 7.9% Property 5.8% Other .7% Drug offenses
are self-explanatory as being victimless, but so too are public-order offenses, which also
fall under the victimless crimes category. Public order offenses include such things as
immigration, weapons charges, public drunkenness, selling lemonade without a license,
dancing in public, feeding the homeless without a permit etc.. The United States has the
highest prison population rate in the world. Presently 756 per 100,000 of the national population is behind bars.
This is in contrast to an average world per-capita prison population rate of 145 per 100,000 (158 per 100,000 if set against a world
prison population of 10.65 million), based on 2008 U.N. population data. In other words, the U.S. incarcerates its citizens at a rate
that is 5 times the world average. In 2008, according to the Department of Justice, there were 7,308,200 persons in the US
corrections system, of whom 4,270,917 were on probation, 828,169 were on parole, 785,556 were in jails, and 1,518,559 were in state
and federal prisons. This means that the U.S. alone is responsible for holding roughly 15% of all the prisoners in the world. In other
words, 1 in 42 Americans is under correctional supervision. This constitutes over 2% of the entire U.S. population. That percentage
jumps up drastically if we limit the comparison to working aged adult males, of which there are around 100 million. Over 5% of the
adult male population is under some form of correctional supervision, alternatively stated, 1 in 20 adult males are under correctional
supervision in the U.S. According to 2006 statistics, 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men are behind bars, as are 1 in 15 adult black men. If we
limit the data to black males between the ages 20 to 34, 1 in 9 are behind bars. Keep in mind that 86% of those men in federal
prisons are there for victimless crimes. They have not stolen any property, damaged any property or harmed anyone directly by their
actions. Of course, if you are reading this and live in the US, you are paying for all those people to subsist on a daily basis. Roughly
34% of all prisoners in the U.S. are incarcerated for victimless crimes. In California in 2009 it cost an average of $47,102 a year to
incarcerate an inmate in state prison. In 2005 it cost an average of $23,876 per state prisoner nationally. In 2007, $228 billion was
spent on police, corrections and the judiciary. That constitutes around 1.6% of total U.S. GDP. Of course, being the good economists
that we are, we must not just look at the cost to incarcerate and police, but also at the opportunity cost to society that putting all
those able-bodied men behind bars creates. When a man is put behind bars he is obviously incapable of contributing anything to
society. He becomes a complete burden to society while producing nothing in return for the expenses he creates. He becomes a black
void of resource destruction. It’s important to remember that money’s value is directly related to the consumer goods that a society
produces. If a society produces nothing of value, the money it uses will also be worth nothing of value. If a huge portion of able
bodied workers is locked behind bars, society is effectively penalized twice – once for the resources that are diverted into the prison
industry and it is penalized again for the opportunity cost of the lost labor of those prisoners. I find some dark humor in the fact that
those who engage in victimless crime don’t create any real victims until they are put behind bars, at which point they cause the State
to steal $47,000 a year from the tax paying public. In our justice system today, victims are victimized twice; once by the perpetrator
of the crime against them, and the other by the State which then forces the victim to pay for the punishment of their assailant.
Clearly our society’s notion of “justice” is logically ridiculous. It’s apparently not OK for someone to steal from you, but its perfectly
acceptable for the State to steal from you if the State is going to use that money to punish the person who stole from you. – what kind
of asinine system of justice is that? What is justice? Isn’t justice making a victim whole once again? Isn’t justice punishing a criminal
for the damages he imposed upon his victims? I propose that the only real justice that can be enacted in a free society is monetary
punishment in the form of taking the perpetrators property and handing it to their victim, or ostracism by defamation of character. I
know some people will cry that under such a system violent criminals will be left free to roam the streets, but isn’t that what our
system is doing now? Consider that if a man commits a violent crime today, he is put behind bars for some arbitrary length of time
with hundreds of other violent criminals, after which he is released back on to the streets. Do you think that criminal is going to be
more dangerous to society after spending years locked in a cage with other violent criminals or less dangerous? Numerous
studies show that prison either increases, or has no impact on, recidivism. Thus, it all
comes down to punishment. Isn’t being branded a criminal, along with monetary
punishment to make a victim whole once again, enough? How difficult do you think your
life would be if you were convicted of murder, everyone knew about it and half your assets
and income were being handed to your victim’s family? The rest of your life would be a
living hell. Putting people behind bars does nothing but squander resources. It deprives society of
able-bodied workers and costs society massive amounts of resources which are stolen from the general public through the coercive
theft of taxation. Consider how much richer American society would be today if it had an additional 5% of the male population
working to produce goods and services in the private sector labor force. Economist David Friedman has put together a fantastic
presentation on how society could be organized in such a way as to eliminate all victimless crime while simultaneously eliminating
the necessity of the State to steal from the victims of crimes to pay for their assailants punishment. After you’re done watching
Friedman’s presentation, check out this fantastic comic put together by the Real Cost of Prisons project.
At: spending/economy
Martak 2012 (Danielle, PhD student in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster
University. Danielle was previously a Research Assistant for the Public Intellectuals Project and the
McMaster Centre for Scholarship in the Public Interest, abolition democracy and carceral oppression in
the us, http://publicintellectualsproject.mcmaster.ca/social-justice/abolition-democracy-and-carceraloppression-in-the-united-states/, LB)
Corporations employing prisoners and individuals seeing prisons constructed in their communities are
unfortunately not the only ones benefitting from increasing rates of imprisonment. Private prison
companies in the U.S. reap extensive profits from escalating numbers of inmates, causing many investors
seeking low-risk shares with high returns (regardless of the moral cost) to eagerly provide capital to these companies,
which in turn lobby for every harsher law-and-order legislation . The largest private prison company in the U.S., the Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), for example, has boasted arelatively well-performing share price over the last ten years, leading to it
being labeled a“recession-resistant” investment. Ominously, last year the CCA earned a pre-tax, pre-interest profit
of $332.1 million, a figure up almost $10 million from 201o [viii]. The CCA’s 2011 financial report discloses that this
difference “resulted from a 3.4% increase in our average daily inmate population to 81,016 for 2011 from 78,319 during 2010” [ix]. In
this age of ruthless capitalism, private prisons are quite literally transforming people into profit, thus leaving owners and investors
longing for ever-rising rates of incarceration to swell revenues. Of course, this reliance of the American economy upon
the hyper-control of an extremely racialized group of people has chilling slavery-like implications. A longtime prison activist and untiring warrior for social justice, Davis takes up this problem in Abolition
Democracy as she delineates the myriad ways in which the prison system is “carry[ing] out this terrible
legacy” [x] of slavery that is “is not only born by black prisoners, but by poor Latino, Native American,
Asian, and white prisoners” [xi] as well. Brilliantly, she engages with the DuBoisian notion of “abolition democracy” – a
democracy that is free of injustice – to reveal that truly eradicating this continued oppression requires destroying the institutions
that support it, particularly that of the prison. In outlining this project of abolition, Davis is careful to highlight two very
important components: first, that prison abolition must not be limited to the disappearance of facilities,
but rather must encompass the transformation of the countless “economic, social, and political
conditions” [xii] that now nurture the existence of prisons. This includes challenging media affirmations of punitive
responses to crime to the current capitalist system that, through its commitment to abandoning those who
cannot support themselves, catalyzes the arrests of many for poverty-related crimes, encourages
companies to use prison labour, and celebrates the profit-seeking initiatives of the corrections industry.
Second, Davis expresses that this abolitionist work cannot be solely directed at dismantling these
oppressive institutions; it must also be focused on “building up…creating new institutions” [xiii] that not
only work to prevent crime, but are also integral to developing a society that discourages, rather than
fosters, inequalities. As it seems there is no end in sight for American tough-on-crime initiatives, Davis’s Abolition
Democracy, with its power to illuminate readers on the racism integral to the U.S. prison system and on
real ways to resist an appalling prison industrial complex, stands as an invaluable call for a more humane
and critically engaged world.
Ks
Framework – our discussion good
Discussing prison abolition in academic spaces is key
Rodríguez 2010 (Dylan. "The Disorientation of the Teaching Act: Abolition as Pedagogical
Position." Radical Teacher 88.1 (2010): 7-19,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/rdt/summary/v088/88.rodriguez.html, LB)
The global U.S. prison regime has no precedent or peer and has become a primary condition of schooling,
education, and pedagogy in every possible site. Aside from its sheer accumulation of captive bodies (more than 2.5
million, if one includes children, military captives, undocumented migrants, and the mentally ill/disordered),1 the prison has
become central to the (re)production and (re)invention of a robust and historically dynamic white
supremacist state: at its farthest institutional reaches, the prison has developed a capacity to organize and disrupt the most
taken-for-granted features of everyday social life, including “family,” “community,” “school,” and individual social identities.
Students, teachers, and administrators of all kinds have come to conceptualize “freedom,” “safety,” and
“peace” as a relatively direct outcome of state-conducted domestic war (wars on crime, drugs, gangs, immigrants,
terror, etc.), legitimated police violence, and large-scale, punitive imprisonment. In what follows, I attempt to offer
the outlines of a critical analysis and schematic social theory that might be useful to two overlapping, urgent tasks of the
radical teacher: 1) to better understand how the prison, along with the relations of power and normalized
state violence that the prison inhabits/produces, form the everyday condition of possibility for the
teaching act; and 2) to engage a historically situated abolitionist praxis that is, in this moment, primarily
pedagogical. A working conception of the “prison regime” offers a useful tool of critical social analysis as well as a theoretical
framework for contextualizing critical, radical, and perhaps abolitionist pedagogies. In subtle distinction from the criminological,
social scientific, and common sense understandings of “criminal justice,” “prisons/ jails,” and the “correctional system,” the notion
of a prison regime focuses on three interrelated technologies and processes that are dynamically produced at the site of
imprisonment: first, the prison regime encompasses the material arrangements of institutional power that create informal (and
often nominally illegal) routines and protocols of militarized physiological domination over human beings held captive by the state.
This domination privileges a historical anti-black state violence that is particularly traceable to the latter
stages of continental racial chattel slavery and its immediate epochal aftermath in “post-emancipation”
white supremacy and juridical racial segregation/apartheid—a privileging that is directly reflected in the
actual demography of the imprisoned population, composed of a Black majority . The institutional
elaborations of this white supremacist and anti-black carceral state create an overarching system of
physiological domination that subsumes differently racialized subjects (including whites) into
institutional routines (strip searching and regular bodily invasion, legally sanctioned torture, ad hoc
assassination, routinized medical neglect) that revise while sustaining the everyday practices of genocidal
racial slavery. While there are multiple variations on this regime of physiological dominance—including (Latino/a, Muslim, and
Arab) immigrant detention, extra-territorial military prisons, and asylums—it is crucial to recognize that the genealogy of the
prison’s systemic violence is anchored in the normalized Black genocide of U.S. and New World nation-building.2 Second, the
concept of the prison regime understands the place of state-ordained human capture as a modality of
social (dis)organization that produces numerous forms of interpersonal and systemic (race, class, gender,
sexual) violence within and beyond the physical sites of imprisonment . Here, the multiple and vast social
effects of imprisonment (from affective disruptions of community and extended familial ties to long-term
economic/geographic displacement) are understood as fundamental and systemic dimensions of the
policing and imprisonment apparatus, rather than secondary or unintended consequences of it.3 Third, the
prison regime encompasses the multiple knowledges and meanings that are created around the
institutional site and cultural symbol of “the prison,” including those that circulate in popular culture and
among the administrative
Framework – role of the judge
If you conclude that prisons are bad, you must vote aff regardless of the
consequences – you have a pedagogical responsibility
Rodríguez 2010 (Dylan. "The Disorientation of the Teaching Act: Abolition as Pedagogical
Position." Radical Teacher 88.1 (2010): 7-19,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/rdt/summary/v088/88.rodriguez.html, LB)
The abolitionist teacher must be willing to occupy the difficult and often uncomfortable position of
political leadership in the classroom. To some, this reads as a direct violation of Freirian conceptions of critical pedagogy,
but I would argue that it is really an elaboration and amplification of the revolutionary spirit at the heart of
Freire’s entire lifework. That is, how can a teacher expect her/ his students to undertake the courageous and
difficult work of inhabiting an abolitionist positionality—even if only as an “academic” exercise—unless
the teacher herself/himself embodies, performs, and oozes that very same political desire ? In fact, it often
seems that doing the latter is enough to compel many students (at least momentarily) to become intimate and familiar with the
allegedly impossible. Finally, the horizon of the possible is only constrained by one’s pedagogical willingness to
locate a particular political struggle (here, prison abolition) within the long and living history of liberation
movements. In this context, “prison abolition” can be understood as one important strain within a continuously unfurling fabric
of liberationist political horizons, in which the imagination of the possible and the practical is shaped but not limited by the specific
material and institutional conditions within which one lives. It is useful to continually ask: on whose shoulders does
one sit, when undertaking the audacious identifications and political practices endemic to an abolitionist
pedagogy? There is something profoundly indelible and emboldening in realizing that one’s “own”
political struggle is deeply connected to a vibrant, robust, creative, and beautiful legacy of collective
imagination and creative social labor (and of course, there are crucial ways of comprehending historical liberation struggles
in all their forms, from guerilla warfare to dance).
Framework – imagination good
Imagining a US without prisons is a radical act that catalyzes demands for
abolition
Rodriguez & Davis 2005 (Dylan, and Angela. Angela Y. Davis teaches in the History of Consciousness
program at the University of California (215 Oakes College, Santa Cruz, CA 95060), and has been actively
involved in prison-related campaigns since the events that led to her own incarceration in 1970. Dylan
Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor at University of California - Riverside and was involved in the
formation of Critical Resistance "The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A Conversation." The Challenge of
Prison Abolition: A Conversation. N.p., 2005. Web. 20 July 2015.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davisinterview.html, LB)
Angela: In order to imagine a world without prisons -- or at least a social landscape no longer dominated by
the prison -- a new popular vocabulary will have to replace the current language, which articulates crime
and punishment in such a way that we cannot think about a society without crime except as a society in
which all the criminals are imprisoned. Thus, one of the first challenges is to be able to talk about the many
ways in which punishment is linked to poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other modes of
dominance. In the university, the emergence of the interdisciplinary field of prison studies can help to trouble
the prevailing criminology discourses that shape public policy as well as popular ideas about the
permanence of prisons. At the high school level, new curricula can also be developed that encourage critical
thinking about the role of punishment. Community organizations can also play a role in urging people to link
their demands for better schools, for example, to a reduction of prison spending . Dylan: Your last comment
suggests that we need to rupture the ideological structures embodied by the rise of the prison-industrial complex. How does prison
abolition force us to rethink common assumptions about jurisprudence, in particular "criminal justice?" Angela: Since the
invention of the prison as punishment in Western society during the late 1700s, criminal justice systems
have so thoroughly depended on imprisonment that we have lost the ability to imagine other ways to solve
the problem of "crime." One of the interesting contributions of prison abolitionists has been to propose other
paradigms of punishment or to suggest that we need to extricate ourselves from the assumption that
punishment must be a necessary response to all violations of the law. Reconciliatory or restorative justice, for
example, is presented by some abolitionists as an approach that has proved successful in non-Western societies -- Native American
societies, for example -- and that can be tailored for use in urban contexts in cases that involve property and other offenses. The
underlying idea is that in many cases, the reconciliation of offender and victim (including monetary
compensation to the victim) is a much more progressive vision of justice than the social exile of the offender.
This is only one example -- the point is that we will not be free to imagine other ways of addressing crime
as long as we see the prison as a permanent fixture for dealing with all or most violations of the law.
Framework – discussion of trans violence good
Discussing violence against trans people in academic spaces is our responsibility –
it has material impacts for the composition of our communities
Pusch 2004 (Rob, associate director of Project Advance and currently oversees Syracuse University PA's
instructional service, “interrupting heteronormativity,” 2004, LB)
How does being transgender impact campus, and more specifically, classroom experiences? For those who
identify as transgender, a number of issues surface. Gender is a public display that is viewed by the people around
us, thus the process of transition that many transgender people experience can be quite visible. 2 Those who
successfully pass as a particular gender become invisible to those around them as transgender persons, but not all transitions go
unnoticed. Being visible and invisible as transgender raises different issues on campus and in the classroom.
As mentioned previously, transition is a very public process, one that can be obvious to others. People
who identify as transgender do not transition at the same rate, or in the same manner. Regardless, those who
go through a time of being marked as breaking the unwritten rules of gender often cause anxiety and
confusion among aquaintences and colleagues. This can result in many responses on campus and in the
classroom. For my dissertation (Pusch, 2003), I spoke with a number of transgender college students about their experiences of
transition and the issues they faced. For example, one participant, Kristen,3 spoke about her experience as an undergraduate
student at a large private university. While she presented as a woman and had begun taking hormones, she had not yet legally
changed her name. This meant that her school records were still in her “boy name.” It is not uncommon for transgender
students to be in this situation because going through the legal name change process can be costly and
takes time. However, this meant that on campus she was typically called by Justin, not Kristen. One
professor commented that he recognized her as a Smith, but that the name on his class list was Justin Smith and that couldn’t be
her. When she replied that it was, his response was “weird...” The professor was clearly confused by someone visually presenting as a
woman, yet having a masculine name. While his feelings about the disjuncture between Kristen’s presentation and her name on the
class list are not uncommon, it succeeded in making Kristen feel uncomfortable identifying as transgender. The professor’s reaction
also shut down any potential discussion with Kristen about being transgender and how she preferred to be addressed in class. Along
with this discomfort of how to come out to faculty and explain to them how we wish to be addressed, transgender students often feel
they end up having to educate others on what it means to be transgender. Often the burden is placed on us to become
educators, or we are made to feel as if it is our responsibility to make others feel more comfortable around
us. While some transgender people may not mind being put in the position of explaining what it means to
be transgender, others see this as a burden. As one friend of mine commented, when he comes out to others, he ends up
feeling like an object of curiosity—like a carnival exhibit, or a freak. I’ve been on hormones for over five years and have, for the most
part, become invisible as transgender. Since testosterone has successfully masculinized my appearance, people who do not know me,
or who are meeting me for the first time, assume I am biologically male. Given the anxiety of the years when I was more
obviously breaking the unwritten gender rules, you might imagine this is preferable. However, being
invisible brings its own set of anxieties. Passing as male means that those who do not know I am transgender do not fully
know me. While I may look male and appear to be a man, who I am is far more complex; who I am is also
impacted by my personal history of being female and growing up as a girl. Since transgender persons are at a
greater risk of violence,4 invisibility brings a measure of safety. This often leads transgender people to maintain their silence. As
someone who is often invisible, I am able to witness how oblivious others are to the presence of transgender persons and about how
gender works in general. For example, last year I was observing a class in which students were responding to a
talk on LGBT issues. One young woman summarized the talk saying “it was about lesbians, gays, bisexuals
and ... what was that other thing?” Someone else had to say “transgender.” While within the LGBT community
many have at least heard about transgender persons, this young woman’s comment was a reminder that not only do many people
not understand transgender issues, they don’t even know the word. This level of ignorance makes coming out in
classrooms even more daunting. While some of us are out about being transgender and try to educate
others on transgender issues, many prefer the anonymity of passing. Within the classroom, faculty can,
and should, work to create an environment that allows transgender students to feel safe no matter how
they choose to present themselves. As more and more students begin to transition while in college, faculty will need to be
aware of the steps they can take to help create an accepting environment. Faculty should be respectful of student requests such as
using a name other than the one that appears on the class list, and using students’ desired pronouns. Also, do not assume the
student is openly transgender. While some students might come out to a faculty member, they may not be out to other students.
Many students are concerned about the reactions of those around them as they go through the process of
transitioning from one gender to another.
Defense of PIC
Using the concept of the prison industrial complex is key to connect the enormity
of the prison regime to the totalizing ideology that justifies it
Sharman 2014 (Samantha, phd in gender studies, destabilizing the prison industrial complex:
necropolitics, biopolitics and the reproduction of sovereignty, university of Arizona,
http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/bitstream/10150/321955/1/azu_etd_mr_2014_0202_sip1_
m.pdf, LB)
The PIC is the term used to name the enormity of the US prison regime. It refers to both physical carceral
spaces and a governing ideology. The carceral landscape is made material in the form of federal and state
prisons, private prisons, county jails, immigration detention centers, juvenile justice facilities, holding
rooms, court rooms, sheriff’s offices, psychiatric institutes, military jails, etc. It also refers to a particular
ideology, produced in part by the state and in part by the socio-cultural, in relationship with
neoliberalism, capitalism, globalization, and the corporate landscape. In addition to material spaces and
economic and geopolitical connections, the PIC is a way to identify, name, and interrogate state practices
of surveillance, policing, screening, profiling, and other technologies which define, (re)produce,
categorize, sanction, and control bodies and populations (Stanley, 2011, 6).
White supremacy 1st
It is everyone’s responsibility to fight white supremacy – it’s the structuring
principle of all violence
Commisong 2013 (Solomon, educator, community activist, author, and the host of the Your World
News media collective, the war on white supremacy, http://blackagendareport.com/content/war-whitesupremacy, LB)
The struggle to end White Supremacy is one that must continue and grow even stronger – countless youth
of color simply depend on it. Resistance to white supremacist ideology is paramount. If you believe in humanity
(regardless of the color of your skin) you must join in this resistance. White Supremacy is a most deadly social
malady. It has given birth to Apartheid, Jim Crow, mass murder, chattel slavery – the list literally goes on
and on. People of color must resist White Supremacy in every way they can. We must organize ourselves to combat it – teaching
our youth to recognize it is an important first step. People of color must collectively resist White Supremacy, and
good intentioned white people must play their own critical roles within this struggle. It is the obligation of any
good intentioned white person to go in to white communities and organize an end to the social disease
there. After all, White Supremacy emanates from white communities. It is frequently birthed from ignorance and hatred, among
several social maladies and complexes. White people, it is your responsibility to put an end to White Supremacy in
your communities just as it is the responsibility of men to bury Male Supremacy and sexual/physical
abuse of women. White Supremacy is killing masses of people (physically and mentally). When will we all decide to wage a war
on this pervasive social illness/ideology, and put and end to it? Humanity depends on our collective commitment to
end it before it metastasizes and puts and end to us all.
Perm – coalitions
Permutation – the abolition movement is an anti oppression movement dedicated
to fighting systems of violence
Davis 2003 (Angela Y professor of history of consciousness at the University of California, Are Prisons
Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories, 2003, http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wpcontent/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf, LB)
Radical opposition to the global prison industrial complex sees the antiprison movement as a vital means
of expanding the terrain on which the quest for democracy will unfold . This movement is thus antiracist,
anticapitalist, antisexist, and antihomophobic. It calls for the abolition of the prison as the dominant
mode of punishment but at the same time recognizes the need for genuine solidarity with the millions of
men, women, and children who are behind bars. A major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create
more humane, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How, then,
do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the needs of prisoners-calling for less
violent conditions, an end to state sexual assault, improved physical and mental health care, greater
access to drug programs, better educational work opportunities, unionization of prison labor, more
connections with families and communities, shorter or alternative sentencingand at the same time call for
alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that
question the place of the prison in our future?
Permutation is the best strategy – fore-fronting abolitionism as a strategy for
oppression solves better
Lovato 7/9 (Brian. Ph.D., The University of California Santa Barbara, 2013 M.A., The New School of Social Research, 2006 B.A.,
California Baptist University, 2004. “We cannot reform away oppression. It must be abolished: Brian Lovato on Abolition”. 9 July
2015. Abolition Journal. http://abolitionjournal.org/brian-lovato-abolition-statement)//JuneC//
Abolition is both a way of seeing the world and a way of being in and acting in the world.
For me, it means understanding the connections between settler colonialism, the
carceral state, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, racialized capitalism, etc. But it
is also a recognition of our responsibility to act upon these interconnected institutions
of oppression in order to overcome obstacles to dignity and freedom. My own abolitionist politics
have their roots in struggles around labor, immigration, and the incarceration of young people of color. These issues have opened my
eyes to the connections between them and other forms of oppression that keep things exactly the way they are. They have also driven
home the fact that we cannot reform away oppression. It must be abolished . As someone trained as an
academic I too often found myself being asked to step back from this perspective in order to produce better, more objective
scholarship. I quickly realized that objectivity always meant favoring the status quo. Abolition
represents a desire to do away with this notion of objectivity. It represents a desire to do
away with the false distinctions between activism and scholarship . This is important to me as someone
who is compelled to act in solidarity with all of those suffering under existing ways of doing things. I don’t see any reason why my
scholarly work ought to be separated from this action and Abolition encourages me to engage the world holistically.
Anthro
Animal non-exploitation relies on prison abolition to catalyze it
Hammer 2008 (ida, veganism and prison abolition, http://veganideal.mayfirst.org/content/veganismand-prison-abolition, LB)
Unlike "humane treatment," the vegan ideal of nonexploitation is linked to principles of anti-oppression.
That is, veganism calls the "the material and psychological gains" of human privilege into question; its
primary aim is to eliminate the system of human supremacy. In contrast, under the concept of "humane
treatment," human privilege goes unquestioned; this concept only seeks to reduce harm or suffering that
occurs under a system of human supremacy. I find parallels here between veganism and prison abolition.
Both call out the political relations of oppressions that are usually masked and depoliticized with similar
terms. That is, both reject the calls for more "humane treatment" under the existing system. Also, both prisons
and the exploitation of nonhuman animals are often justified on the basis of "human nature." People who argue for the
"humane treatment" of human prisoners or nonhuman animals usually can't conceive of a world where
humans aren't imprisoned or without the exploitation of nonhuman animals . Or they simply refuse to believe that
such a world is desirable. However, veganism and prison abolition both show that the society we live in
determines whether these forms of oppressions exist, and they both work to present a vision of what the
world would look like without these oppressive power relations . In the spirit of honoring the efforts of all who are
striving for the emancipation of humans and of other animals, it is important that vegans support prison abolition. The prison
industrial complex and the exploitation of nonhuman animals are connected through a rhetoric of
"cruelty" and "humane treatment," and veganism and prison abolition are connected by a commitment to
anti-oppression. Moreover, there seems little sense in eliminating a system that imprisons and controls
nonhuman animals without working to eliminate a system that similarly imprisons and controls human
animals.
Cap
Link turn – Abolition key to breaking down the profitable industry known as the
prison system
Davis 2003 (Angela Y professor of history of consciousness at the University of California, Masked
Racism: reflection on the prison industrial complex,
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davisprison.html, LB)
As prisons proliferate in U.S. society, private capital has become enmeshed in the punishment industry. And
precisely because of their profit potential, prisons are becoming increasingly important to the U.S. economy . If the
notion of punishment as a source of potentially stupendous profits is disturbing by itself, then the strategic
dependence on racist structures and ideologies to render mass punishment palatable and profitable is
even more troubling. Prison privatization is the most obvious instance of capital's current movement
toward the prison industry. While government-run prisons are often in gross violation of international human rights
standards, private prisons are even less accountable. In March of this year, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the
largest U.S. private prison company, claimed 54,944 beds in 68 facilities under contract or development in the U.S., Puerto Rico, the
United Kingdom, and Australia. Following the global trend of subjecting more women to public punishment,
CCA recently opened a women's prison outside Melbourne. The company recently identified California as its "new
frontier." Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC), the second largest U.S. prison company, claimed contracts and awards to
manage 46 facilities in North America, U.K., and Australia. It boasts a total of 30,424 beds as well as contracts for
prisoner health care services, transportation, and security. Currently, the stocks of both CCA and WCC are
doing extremely well. Between 1996 and 1997, CCA's revenues increased by 58 percent, from $293 million
to $462 million. Its net profit grew from $30.9 million to $53.9 million. WCC raised its revenues from
$138 million in 1996 to $210 million in 1997. Unlike public correctional facilities, the vast profits of these
private facilities rely on the employment of non-union labor.
Cap perm (trans version of the aff)
Gonzalez 2012 (maya, communization and the abolition of gender,
http://libcom.org/library/communization-abolition-gender, LB)
Communization is not a revolutionary position. It is not a form of society we build after the revolution. It is not a tactic, a strategic
perspective, an organization, or a plan. Communization describes a set of measures that we must take in the
course of the class struggle if there is to be a revolution at all. Communization abolishes the capitalist
mode of production, including wage-labor, exchange, the value form, the state, the division of labor and
private property. That the revolution must take this form is a necessary feature of class struggle today. Our cycle of struggles
can have no other horizon, since the unfolding contradictions of capitalism annihilated the conditions
which other forms of revolution required. It is no longer possible to imagine a situation in which social divisions are
dissolved after the revolution1. Since the revolution as communization must abolish all divisions within social
life, it must also abolish gender relations – not because gender is inconvenient or objectionable, but
because it is part of the totality of relations that daily reproduce the capitalist mode of production. Gender,
too, is constitutive of capital’s central contradiction, and so gender must be torn asunder in the process of the revolution. We
cannot wait until after the revolution for the gender question to be solved . Its relevance to our existence will not be
transformed slowly – whether through planned obsolescence or playful deconstruction, whether as the equality of gender identities
or their proliferation into a multitude of differences. On the contrary, in order to be revolution at all, communization
must destroy gender in its very course, inaugurating relations between individuals defined in their
singularity. The fact that revolution takes the form of communization is not the result of lessons learned from past defeats, nor
even from the miserable failure of past movements to solve the gender question. Whether or not we can discern, after the fact, a
winning strategy for the movements of the past says nothing about the present. For capital no longer organizes a unity
among proletarians on the basis of their common condition as wage-laborers. The capital-labor relation
no longer allows workers to affirm their identity as workers and to build on that basis workers’
organizations capable of assuming power within the state. Movements that elevated workers to the status of a
revolutionary subject were still ‘communist’, but communist in a mode that cannot be ours today. The revolution as
communization has no revolutionary subject, no affirmable identity– not the Worker, the Multitude, or
the Precariat. The real basis of any such revolutionary identity has melted away. Of course, workers still exist as
a class. Wage-labor has become a universal condition of life as never before. However, the proletariat is diffuse and fractured. Its
relation to capital is precarious. The structural oversupply of labor is enormous. A surplus population of over one-billion people –
eager to find a place in the global commodity chains from which they have been excluded – makes it impossible to form mass
organizations capable of controlling the supply of labor, except among the most privileged strata of workers2. Capital now
exacerbates, fragments and more than ever relies on the divisions between workers. Once the proud bearers of
a universally relevant revolutionary essence, the Working Class, in its autonomy as a class within capitalism, can no longer build its
power as a class against capital. Today, the revolution must emerge from the disunity of the proletariat, as the
only process capable of overcoming that disunity. If revolutionary action does not immediately abolish all
divisions between proletarians, then it is not revolutionary; it is not communization. In the present moment,
the very inability of workers to unite on the basis of a workers’ identity thus forms the fundamental limit of struggle. But that limit is
at once the dynamic potential of this cycle of struggles, bearing within itself the abolition of gender relations and all other fixed
distinctions. It is no historical accident that the end of the former cycle of struggles coincided with a revolt against the primacy of the
Worker – a revolt in which feminism played a major role. To re-imagine a workers’ movement that would not demote
women, blacks, and homosexuals to a subordinate position is to think a workers’ movement that lacks
precisely the unifying/excluding trait that once allowed it to move at all. With the benefit of hindsight, it is
increasingly clear that if the working class (as a class of all those without direct access to means of production) was destined to
become the majority of society, the workers’ movement was unlikely to organize a clear majority from it. The revolution as
communization does not solve this problem, but it takes it onto a new terrain. As surveyors of this new
landscape, we must assess the present state of the practical movement toward the end of gender relations.
We must also expand discussion of this essential communizing measure.
Capitalism perpetuates policing and racism to maximize profit- only reclaiming
the state from capitalism can end this cycle
El Kilombo Intergalactico 07 (Collective in Durham NC that interviewed Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos “BEYOND
RESISTANCE: EVERYTHING,”libcom.org/files/beyondresistance.pdf//)
djThe war with no front has two faces. The first is destruction. Any coherent logic and practice that allows
for the organization of life outside of capital, anything that allows us to identify ourselves as existing independent of
capital, must be destroyed or, what may be the same thing, reduced to the quantifiable exchangeability of the world market.
Cultures, languages, histories, memories, ideas, and dreams all must undergo this process. In this regard,
struggles for control over the production and subordination of racialized and gendered identities becomes a central
battlefield. All the colors of the people of the earth face off with the insipid color of money. For the
capitalist market, the ultimate goal is to make the entire world a desert of indifference populated only by
equally indifferent and exchangeable consumers and producers. As a direct consequence, the “Empire of Money” has
turned much of its attention to destroying the material basis for the existence of the nation-state, as it was
through this institution that for the last century humanity was able to, even if only marginally, keep the forces of
money at bay. The second face is reorganization. Once the “Empire of Money” has sufficiently weakened the
nation-state, it then reinvigorates this same institution for its own ends through the introduction of schemes
intended to benefit the structure of the market itself, specifically the advent of privatization as government policy. This allows for
the increasing intervention of the state with the end of minimizing its redistributive or social capacity and using it as a
mechanism for the insistent imposition of the market. This imposition is so expansive that literally everything becomes a business
opportunity, a site for speculation, or a marketable moment. What was previously a site for community strength (i.e. a
mural) is today simply a wall for corporate advertisement; what was previously knowledge passed down to be shared
socially is today the site for the latest pharmaceutical patent; what yesterday was free and abundant today is bottled
and sold. Without any social safety net and bombarded with images of an ever-present enemy, the logic of
policing extends to that figure previously known as “the citizen” of the former nation-state. This figure is
today reconstituted as an atomistic self-policing subject, “a competitor” who enters (i.e. misses) all encounters believing that
“the other,” that which is not me, exists only to defeat me, or be defeated by me. A total war indeed. Today there is simply no
quiet corner to rest and catch one’s breath.
Gender
Abolishing the prison directly challenges misogyny
Davis 2011 (Angela. "On Occupy: Roundtable Discussion with Angela Davis and Rev. James
Lawson." On Occupy: Roundtable Discussion with Angela Davis and Rev. James Lawson. N.p., 2011. Web.
23 July 2015. http://reimaginerpe.org/radio/rpe/davis-lawson, LB)
So it seems to me that we have to get rid of this institution that is this haven for the worst kinds of ideologies,
racism and sexism, (22:00) misogyny and transphobia because the prison is also a gendering apparatus .
The more we think about the impact of the prison system on the lives of everyone, regardless of whether they happen to
have had the experience of going to prison, the more we realize that if we want to get rid of gender
violence we’re going to have to get rid of prisons. If we want to (22:30) think about why it is that people who do
not fall into one category or another, people who are not clearly male or female are marginalized and are
treated as if they were not human beings? The prison system has a lot to do with that because there are only male
prisons and female prisons. (23:00) It’s one of the most violent apparatuses that maintains the binary
structure of gender in our society. And I could go on and on. I could talk about the relationship of
education to the prison system, and why in order to begin to build an educational system that values
knowledge and that teaches children how to enjoy learning, we are going to (23:30) get rid of this prison
system which after all in poor communities and communities of color becomes the model for education
with the emphasis on discipline rather than on learning . So I could go on obviously for the next couple of hours talking
about this, but I think everything points to the absolute necessity of abolishing prisons as (24:00) the dominant mode of
punishment.
Giroux
Critical pedagogy good perm
Scott 2014 (Robert, Executive Director of the Prison Education Program at Cornell University, and
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Educational Policy, Organization, & Leadership, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, USING CRITICAL PEDAGOGY TO CONNECT PRISON EDUCATION AND PRISON
ABOLITIONISM, http://www.slu.edu/Documents/law/PLR/Archives/XXXIII-2-14/Scott_Article_0.pdf,
LB)
Critical pedagogy is a set of ideas about teaching practice in the context of understanding power: state
power, economic power, social and cultural power, as well as the struggle between different groups for
power.17 Critical pedagogy combines elements of radical politics and educational theory .18 Drawing
inspiration and direction from twentieth century intellectuals including Paulo Freire, Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and
others, critical pedagogy consolidates ideas about teaching in response to socio-economic power relations linked to race, class, and
gender.19 Critical pedagogy breaks from liberal concepts of multiculturalism, and radical notions of
“unschooling” in that it is committed to engaging the dialectical tensions of a stratified society in the
dialogic process of the classroom.20 Parallels between schools and prisons have been noted in critical
pedagogy literature.21 Here I want to extend the use of critical pedagogy to the work of prison educators and abolitionists. A.
Rejection of sectarianism In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire criticizes political struggle premised upon a
division between “the masses” and a vanguard that leads people into “circles of certainty” such that the
two sects “suffer from an absence of doubt” about their political positions in the movement for change.22
Freire rejected the idea that party A can somehow liberate party B without party B’s involvement. 23 This
idea was not only a critique of revolutionary politics but also a reformulation of the classroom as a site of
struggle for
freedom, dignity, and economic justice. I would argue that abolitionists and prison
educators both have had to grapple with this issue of sectarianism . This is illustrated by the fact that the first book
published by the group that went on to form the abolitionist organization “Critical Resistance” did not include many incarcerated
authors.24 Subsequent anthologies brought in more voices from the inside.25 I have observed a similar pattern with
independentlyorganized prison education programs, which essentially begin with a group of outsiders (university faculty, staff, and
administrators) planning to create a program at a prison—once the program comes into existence, the insiders begin to shape the
direction of the program. Given the utterly sectarian nature of prison, this sequence of events should not be
surprising.26 Rather, it illustrates the principle that radical prison organizing includes more incarcerated
voices over time as relationships become established.27 As a prison educator, I have had to confront my own prejudices
in the quest to avoid sectarianism. When a local bible college began a college-level program at the prison where I had helped initiate
a secular college program a few years earlier, I was skeptical.28 I had heard stories of fire and brimstone preachers in the prison
context, blasting already criminalized people with the Lord’s condemnation of their “sins.” When I saw white, rural men, sometimes
wearing clothes with Evangelical slogans, sometimes wearing suits, sometimes wearing Harley-Davidson motorcycle gear, in a
prison crowded with black and brown men wearing state issued uniforms, it looked like oppression.29 When I looked honestly at the
bible college, however, I saw much more. Over time I came to notice that many (if not most) of the students enrolling in the bible
college were Latinos—I suspect the religious study became, for them, a means to fortify their identity.30 The college became a new
venue for them to explore and experience a part of their culture. Today I credit the bible college with creating a process of
humanization with the men at the prison—I do not have to endorse Christian doctrine to recognize that people are being treated
more humanely by the bible college than the GED program.31 In fact, I found that the bible college instructors and I shared the
paradoxical view that we have to go into prison to move society away from prison. Where is the boundary with implementing nonsectarianism? What about programs that educate correctional officers in addition to incarcerated
students?32 I have heard stories about the communication breakdown that occurs when officers become
students in the prison classroom. To the best of my knowledge, there are no classrooms in which officers and
inmates study together as equals. Is organizing education for correctional officers a politically misguided
project that will not work, or does it reveal a form of nonsectarianism that is too radical to exist today? I
will simply remark that my intention to avoid sectarianism has forced me to stop assuming I know how to avoid sectarianism.
Abolitionists need not be divided from prison educators who have similar critiques of the prison system .
Furthermore, they may find that they share an uncompromising commitment to the disenfranchised:
whether they are viewed as incarcerated scholars or political prisoners, the common denominator is
opposition to the social order that views people only in terms of their criminal convictions (i.e. as “offenders”).
Both movements share critiques of the racialized criminal justice system, the bottom-line approach to
policing, and an absence of critical consciousness of the political economy of incarceration. 33 In the spirit of
critical pedagogy, I am arguing that the two could find common expression in the rejection of sectarianism
and an embrace of dialogue and solidarity in spite of their different tactics.
Perm + social death impact
Heiner 2003 (brady, faculty at California state university, social death and the relationship between
prison abolition and prison reform,
https://www.academia.edu/10352578/Social_Death_and_the_Relationship_Between_Prison_Abolition
_and_Prison_Reform_2003_, LB)
Whether it is social death by incarceration, political death by neutralization and disenfranchisement,
productive death by exploitation, or physical death by execution, capital and its state-form predicate the
life of the wealthy, the white, and the privileged on the death of the poor, the black and brown, and the
impoverished. From this perspective, all reformist politics are simply not radical enough. It is not simply that
incarceration is a superficial solution to complex social and economic inequalities. Many recognize that fact and use it to
fuel reformist agendas that reason, if the causes of social and economic inequality are more complex than
the current criminal justice system acknowledges, then let us restructure the criminal justice system in
such a way that it accommodates those social and economic complexities. However, these movements seek
merely to perfect the inherently oppressive logic of the capitalist state-form; would argue, however, that
the point is to destroy it. To embrace a more radical and more properly abolitionist politics, we must acknowledge
that our life in the present society is determined by and founded upon the social and physical death of the
incarcerated. We must recognize that the wealth of the transnational capitalist class is dependent upon the control of the living
labor of he multitude. Thus, we must refuse a system that sustains life through the infliction of death a system
that predicates the freedom of the minority upon the unfreedom of the majority . In a discussion devoted to
prison reform and prison abolition, it is crucial that we explicitly address the differences between the two . For
instance, we cannot appropriately address the issue of abolitionism without confronting its relation- ship to
the state. Although prison reform and even death penalty abolition are assimilable to liberal politics, prison abolition exists well
outside the framework of political liberalism. For example, Giroux stated, the role of the state as a guardian of public
interests appears to be lost in [contemporary] society. Here we need to interrogate exactly who and what
constitutes the public. Like many others, I would argue that the state has never served as a guardian of public interests, unless
we interpret public interests as something like the interests of capital or the interests of the white ruling class. The element that
ultimately distinguishes a radical (abolitionist) agenda from a liberal (reformist) one resides in the totality
of this approach. The fundamental aim of a radical movement is total (systemic) transformation. For that to
be effected, positive, constructive measures must be continually accompanied (and, in many cases, preceded) by negative,
destructive ones. That is to say, an abolitionist movement acknowledges that the prison-industrial complex (and
the capitalist state-form that sustains it) must be completely dismantled for democracy to be actualized.
For, as long as our lives in present society are determined by and founded upon the social and physical
death of the incarcerated, we are not truly free. No reformation of the current system will lead to this total
transformation. Reformist movements fail to recognize that social and physical death are essential to the
functioning of the present social system. Consequently, reformist movements refuse to acknowledge that
destructive actions are necessary in the struggle for liberation. We must concentrate on the structures and
institutions that we need to destroy just as much as we focus on the practices and formations we must construct to be free. We
must eliminate enforced social death entirely for us to be able to constitute alternative social
organizations that truly provide for democratic freedom. In addition, we must hold this systemic
transformation in mind as we engage in our various local struggles. For, without this total vision what
Rodriguez calls an abolitionist political fantasy our local successes will be doomed to mere reform
Neolib
Antiblackness and neoliberalism are inherently tied – abolition breaks down both
Dillon 2013 (Stephen, phd in philosophy, fugitive life: race, gender and the rise of the neoliberal-carceral
state,
https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/153053/Dillon_umn_0130E_13833.pdf?sequenc
e=1, LB)
Although Shakur’s essay does not name neoliberalism explicitly, we can read it as a black feminist theorization of
neoliberalism at the very moment of its emergence. Indeed, it is a narration of the drastic racialized and
gendered restructurings of social and economic life in the 1970s United States from the perspective of
someone detained for resisting those changes. Written by a captured member of the underground black liberation
movement, the text names the discourses and (state) violence neoliberalism requires yet erases. Neoliberalism is most
certainly an economic doctrine that prioritizes the mobility and expansion of capital at all costs, but its
mechanisms exceed the liberation of the market from the repression of the state. As Shakur indicates, one of
the conditions of possibility for the emergence of the neoliberal state is the kinship shared between the
free world and the prison—an affinity structured and produced by an antiblackness inaugurated under
chattel-slavery. More over, as Shakur argues throughout the essay, the technologies of immobilization utilized by the
neoliberal state specifically target black women, a process connected to the emergence of the black
feministmovement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By reading black feminist texts from the 1970s as implicit theories
of neoliberalism, we can come to understand the formation and implementation of neoliberalism in a new light. Shakur not only
connects an emergent neoliberalism to a rapidly expanding prison regime, she also links the
contemporary prison to chattel slavery—an institutional, affective, and discursive connection
apprehended by Angela Davis’s phrase, “From the prison of slavery to the slavery of prison. ”28 The
connections made by Shakur between the prison and neoliberalism, and between slavery and the prison, have been thoroughly
explored by many scholars.29 Indeed, during the past two decades, a growing body of scholarship has affirmed
and extended Shakur’s analysis of blackness, slavery, and the prison by exploring what Saidiya Hartman
calls “the afterlife of slavery.”30 By centering racial terror in a genealogy of the prison, scholars have come to understand the
barracoons, coffles, slave holds, and plantations of the Middle Passage as spatial, discursive, ontological, and economic analogues of
modern punishment that have haunted their way into the present.31 If the carceral becomes a functional surrogate for
slavery’s production of social and living death, then Shakur’s text also hints at another connection that has
garnered less attention—slavery’s haunting possession of neoliberalism. While the prison’s connection to
slavery and the market has been well explored, the contemporary market’s relationship to chattel slavery
has largely been overlooked. If slavery’s antiblack technologies inhabit and structure the prison, how do they live on in
the operations of the market? What is the relationship between an anti-blackness inaugurated under the
Atlantic slave trade and the methods of population management used under neoliberalism? How does the
absence, death, and loss left behind by slavery connect to the formation of the contemporary neoliberalcarceral state? What is the connection between the necropolitics of chattel-slavery and the biopolitics of
neoliberalism?
Queerness
We should queer prison abolition – the perm solves vest
Stanley 2012 (eric, queering prison abolition, now?,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_quarterly/v064/64.1.stanley.html, LB)
As many others have observed, the larger LGBT moment’s resources, energies, and desires have been funneled
into a narrow set of “rights” that, through the mobilization of “equality,” attempt to argue for LGBT
inclusion. We can look at the organizations crafting these politics (Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian
Taskforce, Marriage Equality, and others) and make a fairly simple, and somewhat accurate, argument that these campaigns
are an attempt to extend normative power to (some) LGBT people, at the expense of others . While it might
seem surprising to us that people who have historically been the objects of state repression are now clambering
to become part of these same structures, we know that people often work politically against their own
needs and desires. Indeed, the “political” as such might be characterized by this antagonism. However, what
seems to be important to address here is the ways the individualism of rights claims and rights discourse
at large mirrors the logic of the PIC that argues that violence is only and always locatable on the level of
the individual. In other words, I see a connection between the campaigns for gay marriage, which argue
(only) married gays and lesbians deserve the same “privileges” as heterosexuals and the individualism
that fuels the mirage of justice signified by the persistence of the PIC. Here then we have the
neoliberalization of “freedom” via individual claims made both in the name of, and against, the state. An
abolitionist politics can expand our political vision and make clear the violence of the PIC as well as the
limits of the mainstream LGBT moment. To this end, we must not only queer prison abolition but also
abolish hegemonic LGBT politics.
Wilderson
Slavery was moved in to the prisons, but never ended – abolition key
Rodriguez, 7(Dylan Rodriguez 2007. Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a
Penal Democracy. Duke University Press. pg 32-33 “Forced Passages” pg 36) DJ
The prison, as a capillary site for the production and movement of power, exerts a dominion that reaches
significantly beyond its localized setting. This is to argue that the emergence of a reformed and reconceived
prison regime as "a site where much action takes place in the circulatory system" of power and domination, has become
central to constituting the political logic as well as the material reproduction of the United States'social
formation. The prison regime, in other words, generates a technology of power that extends beyond and
out side the institutional formality of the Prison. Similarly, a radical genealogy of this regime must think significantly
beyond and behind the current historical moment to comprehend fully the logic of its formation and sustenance. Scholars such as
Angela Y. Davis, Alex Lichtenstein, David Oshinsky, and others have closely examined the material continuities
between U.S. racial chattel plantation slavery and the emergence of the modern American penal system.
These studies bring crucial attention to the centrality of white supremacist juridical, policing, and
paramilitary regimes in the production of a carceral apparatus during the late nineteenth century that essentially
replicated-and, arguably,exacerbated-the constitutive logic of the supposedly de funct slave plantation. Lichtenstein, for example,
argues convincingly that the transition from chattel slave to black prison labor in the post-Civil War South exemplified the
"continual correspondence between the forces of modernization and the perpetuation of bound labor." He writes, In the
postbellum South, at each stage of the region's development, convict labor was concentrated in some of
the most significant and rapidly growing sectors of the economy. Initially Southern prisoners worked on the rail
roads.... This decisive shift from private to public exploitation of forced black labor marked the triumph of
the modern state's version of the social and economic benefits to be reaped from bound labor , in the name of
developing a more ..."progressive" economy. Thus, from Reconstruction through the Progressive Era the various uses of convict
labor coincided with changes in the political economy of southern capitalism," By way of contrast Davis, in an extended examination
of Frederick Douglass's historical understanding of the post-emancipation criminalization of black communities, offers a
theorization of how "the prison system established its authority as a major institution of discipline and control for black
communities during the last two decades of the nineteenth century," yielding a lineage of "carceral regulation" that arrived at "crisis
proportions" a century later. Most important is Davis's foregrounding of the seamless linkage between the formal
abolition of extant forms of racial chattel slavery in 1865 and the somewhat unheralded (albeit
simultaneous) recodification and moral legitimization of a revised institution of enslavement, which
would occur through the auspices of criminal conviction and imprisonment: When the Thirteenth Amendment
was passed in 1865, thus legally abolishing the slave economy, it also contained a provision that was universally celebrated as a
declaration of the unconstitutionality of peonage. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for
crime,whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or anyplace subject to their
jurisdiction." That exception would render penal servitude constitutional-from 1865 to the present day.
Cp
At: courts cp
Courts strategically discriminate against people of color
Herzing 2005 (Rachel, activist from the US with almost 20 years of organising experience, came to the
forum and gave a talk about the work and politics of two US prison abolitionist organisations "Defending
Justice - What Is The Prison Industrial Complex?" N.p., 2005. Web. 17 July 2015.
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/overview/herzing_pic.html, LB)
The court system is incredibly overburdened, with thousands of people across the country that cannot
afford bail awaiting their trials and court dates in jail-sometimes for a year or more. Public defenders, lawyers
who provide services to people who cannot afford attorneys, are often handling immense caseloads . For
instance, the recommended annual caseload for a public defender should not exceed 150 felonies, or 400 misdemeanors, or 200
juvenile cases. But in Pittsburgh, PA, for example, attorneys were handling between 600 and 1,100 cases per year.16 When cases
do go to trial, juries are picked through a strategic process where each side tries to eliminate people who
might be inclined toward one or the other side-often prosecutors remove those people who have had any
bad experience with law enforcement or might be inclined to empathize with the person or people
standing trial. Jury cases are rarely heard by the "peers" of the people standing trial . Because the court
system is just one stop in the entire system that puts people in cages, it reflects the problems that begin in
other parts of the system. As people of color and poor people are targeted for surveillance and police
repression, more of those same people end up in the courts. The entire prison industrial complex is
shaped by structural inequalities, so it follows that the courts target people of color and poor people just like every other part
of the prison industrial complex. Of course, the impact of racism, classism, and enforcement of social norms also weighs heavily in
determining how people are treated by and in the system. Two examples are demonstrative here. First, Black people
are arrested for drug offenses at higher rates than White people despite the fact that Black people
constitute about 13% of the national population and about 13% of the drug users. Further, while Blacks
represent only about 13% of the drug users nationally, Black people represent 38% of those arrested for
drug offenses, and of that number 55% of those convicted of drug offenses, and 74% of those sent to
prison.17 Second, discrepancies in the application of the death penalty are stark. For instance, Black people are executed at
a substantially higher rate than White people, particularly when the case in question involves a White
victim. Using Maryland as an example, according to the Uniform Crime Report, in 1998, despite the fact that 81% of the state's
homicide victims were Black, 84% of death sentences resulted from cases involving White victims. The difference in
sentencing between the poor and those with some wealth is also glaring. According to Amnesty International, 95%
of all people sentenced to death could not afford their own lawyer. Lastly, the rich have crucial advantages when it comes to the court
system. Those who can afford to hire their own attorneys are less likely to be imprisoned. They can afford
bail, which allows them to leave jail and conduct their own investigations and better prepare for trial.
They can afford better attorneys, better expert witnesses, better private detectives, and more "respectable"
alibis. Those who cannot afford bail and come straight to court from jail are more likely to be imprisoned. Additionally, poor people
are not only found guilty more often than people who are not poor, they are also recommended for suspended sentences and
probation less frequently than people with more money.
At: reformism cp
We should cut as much money from the PIC as possible
Spade et al 2011 (Dean, Captive Genders: BUILDING AN ABOLITIONIST TRANS AND QUEER
MOVEMENT WITH EVERYTHING WE’VE GOT. Oakland, CA: AK, 2011,
http://theloon2013.wikispaces.com/file/view/Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-andPrison-Industrial-Complex.pdf, LB)
We can respond to the crises that our communities are facing right now while refusing long-term
compromises that will strengthen the very institutions that are hurting us. As more and more awareness is
being raised about the terrible violence that transgender and gender-non-conforming people face in
prisons, jails, and detention centers, some prisoner rights and queer and trans researchers and advocates
are suggesting that building trans-specific prisons or jails is the only way that imprisoned transgender and
gender-non-conforming people will be safe in the short-term. Particularly in light of the dangerous popularity of
“gender responsiveness” among legislators and advocates alike, we reject all notions that we must expand the prison
industrial complex to respond to immediate conditions of violence . Funneling more money into prison
building of any kind strengthens the prison industrial complex’s death hold on our communities. We know
that if they build it, they will fill it, and getting trans people out of prison is the only real way to address
the safety issues that trans prisoners face. We want strategies that will reduce and ultimately eliminate the
number of people and dollars going into prisons, while attending to the immediate healing and redress of
individual imprisoned people.
Just leads to more violence
Rodriguez & Davis 2005 (Dylan, and Angela. Angela Y. Davis teaches in the History of Consciousness
program at the University of California (215 Oakes College, Santa Cruz, CA 95060), and has been actively
involved in prison-related campaigns since the events that led to her own incarceration in 1970. Dylan
Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor at University of California - Riverside and was involved in the
formation of Critical Resistance "The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A Conversation." The Challenge of
Prison Abolition: A Conversation. N.p., 2005. Web. 20 July 2015.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davisinterview.html, LB)
Dylan: I think you make a subtle but important point here: prison and penal abolition imply an analysis of society that
illuminates the repressive logic, as well as the fascistic historical trajectory, of the prison's growth as a
social and industrial institution. Theoretically and politically, this "radical position," as you call it, introduces a new set
of questions that does not necessarily advocate a pragmatic "alternative" or a concrete and immediate
"solution" to what currently exists. In fact, I think this is an entirely appropriate position to assume when dealing with a
policing and jurisprudence system that inherently disallows the asking of such fundamental questions as: Why are some lives
considered more disposable than others under the weight of police policy and criminal law? How have we
arrived at a place where killing is valorized and defended when it is organized by the state -- I'm thinking
about the street lynchings of Diallo and Dorismond in New York City, the bombing of the MOVE organization in Philadelphia in
1985, the ongoing bombing of Iraqi civilians by the United States -- yet viciously avenged (by the state) when committed by isolated
individuals? Why have we come to associate community safety and personal security with the degree to
which the state exercises violence through policing and criminal justice? You've written elsewhere that the
primary challenge for penal abolitionists in the United States is to construct a political language and
theoretical discourse that disarticulates crime from punishment . In a sense, this implies a principled refusal to
pander to the typically pragmatist impulse to demand absolute answers and solutions right now to a problem that has deep roots in
the social formation of the United States since the 1960s. I think your open-ended conception of prison abolition also
allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the prison-industrial complex as a set of institutional
and political relationships that extend well beyond the walls of the prison proper. So in a sense, prison
abolition is itself a broader critique of society. This brings me to the next question: What are the most
crucial distinctions between the political commitments and agendas of prison reformists and those of
prison abolitionists? Angela: The seemingly unbreakable link between prison reform and prison development -- referred to by
Foucault in his analysis of prison history -- has created a situation in which progress in prison reform has tended to render
the prison more impermeable to change and has resulted in bigger, and what are considered "better,"
prisons. The most difficult question for advocates of prison abolition is how to establish a balance between reforms that are clearly
necessary to safeguard the lives of prisoners and those strategies designed to promote the eventual abolition of prisons as the
dominant mode of punishment. In other words, I do not think that there is a strict dividing line between reform and
abolition. For example, it would be utterly absurd for a radical prison activist to refuse to support the
demand for better health care inside Valley State, California's largest women's prison, under the pretext
that such reforms would make the prison a more viable institution. Demands for improved health care,
including protection from sexual abuse and challenges to the myriad ways in which prisons violate
prisoners' human rights, can be integrated into an abolitionist context that elaborates specific
decarceration strategies and helps to develop a popular discourse on the need to shift resources from
punishment to education, housing, health care, and other public resources and services.
Effective solutions necessitate an interrogation of the relationships that maintain
the prison industrial complex and an evisceration of them. The alternative is
strategies that still attempt to criminalize bodies deemed suspect
Davis 3 -- former Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, PhD., Political and Social Activist
(Angela, “Are Prisons Obsolete?” p. 105-107, 2003, tony)
If jails and prisons are to be abolished, then what will replace them? This is the puzzling question
that often interrupts further consideration of the prospects for abolition. Why should it be so difficult to
imagine alternatives to our current system of incarceration? There are a number of reasons why we tend
to balk at the idea that it may be possible to eventually create an entirely different-and perhaps more
egalitarian-system of justice. First of all, we think of the current system, with its exaggerated dependence
on imprisonment, as an unconditional standard and thus have great difficulty envisioning any other way
of dealing with the more than two million people who are currently being held in the country's jails,
prisons, youth facilities, and immigration detention centers. Ironically, even the anti-death penalty
campaign tends to rely on the assumption that life imprisonment is the most rational alternative to capital
punishment. As important as it may be to abolish the death penalty, we should be conscious of the way the
contemporary campaign against capital punishment has a propensity to recapitulate the very historical
patterns that led to the emergence of the prison as the dominant form of punishment. The death penalty
has coexisted with the prison, though imprisonment was supposed to serve as an alternative to corporal
and capital punishment. This is a major dichotomy. A critical engagement with this dichotomy would
involve taking seriously the possibility of linking the goal of death penalty abolitionism with strategies for
prison abolition. It is true that if we focus myopically on the existing system-and perhaps this is the
problem that leads to the assumption that imprisonment is the only alternative to death-it is very hard to
imagine a structurally similar system capable of handling such a vast population of lawbreakers. If,
however, we shift our attention from the prison, perceived as an isolated institution, to the set of
relationships that comprise the prison industrial complex, it may be easier to think about alternatives. In
other words, a more complicated framework may yield more options than if we simply attempt to discover
a single substitute for the prison system. The first step, then, would be to let go of the desire to
discover one single alternative system of punishment that would occupy the same
footprint as the prison system. Since the 1 980s, the prison system has become increasingly
ensconced in the economic, political and ideological life of the United States and the transnational
trafficking in U.S. commodities, culture, and ideas. Thus, the prison industrial complex is much
more than the sum of all the j ails and prisons in this country. It is a set of symbiotic
relationships among correctional communities, transnational corporations, media conglomerates, guards'
unions, and legislative and court agendas. If it is true that the contemporary meaning of punishment is
fashioned through these relationships, then the most effective abolitionist strategies will contest these
relationships and propose alternatives that pull them apart. 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.
Reform fails – the Prison Industrial Complex coopts and quashes efforts to reform
the system
Gossett 14 – Lambda Literary Writer Retreat Fellow, black genderqueer and femme fabulous activist
and writer (Che, “We will not rest in peace AIDS activism, black radicalism, queer and/or trans
resistance,” Queer Necropolitics, Edited by Haritaworn, and Posocco, tony)
The prison industrial complex is an always already anti-black, violently antiqueer and anti-transgender
enterprise that perpetuates what Saidiya Hartman names the ‘afterlife of slavery’ (Hartman 2008:
6). It institutionalizes forms of restricted life: following ‘re-entry’, a formerly incarcerated person loses
access to public housing, benefits and federal educational loans and faces chronic joblessness due to
stigma. Incarceration has been historically employed as a means of maintaining an anti-black and
white supremacist sociopolitical and racial capitalist order from antebellum ‘black codes’
that criminalized vagrancy (Dru Stanley 125 126) post-‘emancipation’, to more recent attempts to
extinguish the spirit and destroy the momentum of black liberationist movements in the United States
(ranging from surveillance and sabotage of the Revolutionary Action Movement, to COINTELPRO, to the
current renewed targeting of Assata Shakur). Journalist Shane Bauer (2012) has documented how in
California, the mere possession of black radical literature results in being criminalized as gang related and
put in solitary housing units (SHU) - a form of torture from which exit is uncertain, whose administration
is often based on whether one informs on other incarcerated people (Bauer 2012: 1-4). Prisons thus
continue the logic of COINTELPRO, which aimed to neutralize and eliminate black freedom
movement(s). The prison industrial complex is at once a manifestation of a disciplinary and of a control
society. The prison is one of the central and proliferating oppressive technologies through which bio- and
necropolitical violence and the apparatuses of surveillance that reinforce it are naturalized. The insidious
morphology of the carceral is such that even as it is dismantled via lobbying for decriminalization and
decarceration, on the one hand, it proliferates via extended modes of surveillance and control — ankle
bracelets, probation and parole — on the other. Carceral violence is maintained in various penal registers
and forms.
No reformism – just makes whiteness more insidious
Rodriguez 10 -- Professor and Chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside, PhD. In
Ethnic Studies from Berkeley (Dylan, “The Disorientation of the Teaching Act: Abolition as Pedagogical
Position,” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/rdt/summary/v088/88.rodriguez.html, Radical Teacher,
Number 88, Summer 2010, tony)
Concretely, the reform of the prison required its own expansion and bureaucratic multiplication: for
example, the reform of prison overcrowding came to involve an astronomical growth
in new prison construction (rather than decarceration and release), the reformist outrage against
preventable deaths and severe physiological suffering from (communicable, congenital, and mental)
illnesses yielded the piecemeal incorporation of medical facilities and staff into prison protocols (as
opposed to addressing the fact that massive incarceration inherently creates and circulates sickness), and
reformist recognition of carceral state violence against emotionally disordered, mentally ill, and disabled
captives led to the creation of new prisons and pharmaceutical regimens for the ‘criminally insane,’ and so
on. Following the historical trajectory of Angela Y. Davis’ concise and accurate assessment that ‘during the
(American) revolutionary period, the penitentiary was generally viewed as a progressive reform, linked to
the larger campaign for the rights of citizens,’ it is crucial to recognize that the prison industrial complex
is one of the most significant ‘reformist’ achievements in U.S. history and is not simply the perverse social
project of self-identified reactionaries and conservatives. Its roots and sustenance are
fundamentally located in the American liberal-progressive impulse toward
reforming institutionalized state violence rather than abolishing it.
Reform fails - gets coopted
Shaylor and Chandler 05 (Cassandra Shaylor -- the co-founder and former co-director of Justice Now and a co-founder of
Critical Resistance, and Cynthia Chandler -- Co-Founder and Executive Director of Justice Now, ad junct professor at Golden Gate
University School of Law, 2005, Public Eye - Defending Justice, Reform and Abolition: Points of Tension and Connection,
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/organizing/shaylor_reform.html) //JS
Most activists in prison and their allies outside want to reduce the suffering of people in prison and people in communities that are
targeted for imprisonment. Many also work to challenge prisons more broadly. Increasingly activists and academics are talking
about the points of tension and connection between reform efforts that seek to improve conditions in prison and those that take a
more radical abolitionist approach to the problem and call for the eventual elimination of the prison altogether. While the goals of
the prison reform and prison abolition movements are both grounded in a concern for alleviating the suffering of people in prison
and communities targeted by the prison industrial complex, there is a growing awareness that the political Right has
manipulated and appropriated the rhetoric and strategies of reform efforts to expand the prison system. There is
a resulting need to challenge the Right by identifying those efforts at reform that contribute to an expansion and entrenchment of
the system and those efforts that are necessary steps toward a world that no longer relies on imprisonment. Since the birth of
the penitentiary system almost two hundred years ago, the majority of advocates for people in prison have focused on reform as a
strategy for reducing the suffering of people in prison. In fact, reform efforts to eliminate public displays of corporal
punishment gave birth to the modern penitentiary.1 Once prisons were adopted as the norm, reformers almost
immediately began to voice concern about the impact of imprisonment, in particular the effects of isolation on the mental health of
people in prison. Moreover, the rise of the prison system occurred in reaction to the abolition of slavery and from very early in its
inception the institution was deeply rooted in racism. Immediately following Reconstruction, the Black prison population exploded
through the implementation of Black Codes and the development of the convict lease system.2 The legacy of that racism is present
today in racial profiling, the tracking of young people of color into state systems, and the disproportionate number of Black and
Brown people who continue to populate the prison system. Reformers historically focused on conditions in prisons. Proponents of
women’s rights who were alarmed by sexual violence against women in co-ed prisons argued for separate institutions for women for
instance.3 Absent a radical critique of prisons themselves, concerns about conditions for women were used as a justification for the
birth and mass expansion of the women’s prison system4 where rampant abuse of women continues.5 In fact, one of the legacies
of prison reform (as opposed to radical critique and resistance) is the expansion of the prison industrial complex
and the increasing use of the prison as a mechanism of social control and State violence.6 The history of prison
reform efforts reveals that mere reform fails to address the inequalities, oppression, and state violence upon
which the institution of the prison is built, leaving the violent foundation intact and rendering ineffective attempts to relieve
the suffering of oppressed people confined within it.7 Moreover, all too often such reform efforts are re-appropriated by
the Right and used to strengthen the prison industrial complex and to make it more impervious to critique, resulting in
bigger, "better," and more numerous prisons housing increasing numbers of oppressed people.8 In the contemporary
era of the prison, the Right has used a number of strategies to build the system on the backs of reform efforts.
It fails -- 4 reasons
Shaylor and Chandler 05 (Cassandra Shaylor -- the co-founder and former co-director of Justice Now and a co-founder of
Critical Resistance, and Cynthia Chandler -- Co-Founder and Executive Director of Justice Now, ad junct professor at Golden Gate
University School of Law, 2005, Public Eye - Defending Justice, Reform and Abolition: Points of Tension and Connection,
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/organizing/shaylor_reform.html) //JS
1. USE OF COMPLAINTS ABOUT PRISON CONDITIONS TO JUSTIFY MORE PRISONS Complaints of overcrowding or
decrepit conditions are often taken up by the Right to justify building more prisons. Complaints about how far prisons
are from urban centers are used to justify maintaining those prisons and also building new facilities. Complaints about private
prisons and arguments that they are worse than public prisons because of abuses within them or the blatant profit motive behind
them are seized on by the Right to erase both the egregious human rights abuses and profit-motive that also
exist in State-run prisons. Complaints about inadequate healthcare are taken up to justify bigger prison budgets
and increases in staffing that rarely materialize as better healthcare and instead build the prison system. Rather than
proposing reforms that are readily co-opted to grow the prison system, arguments can be made that critique prison conditions while
also challenging the expansion of prisons. Activists can: argue that decarceration should be the answer to prison
overcrowding; organize urban/rural coalitions to close prisons in rural locations and stop new prisons from being
constructed; work against privatization while simultaneously fighting against imprisonment in any facility; argue for improvements
to healthcare that actually decrease prison spending by providing alternative sentencing and/or releasing sick people in prison. 2.
Cooptation of our language and approaches to expand the system in many instances, the Right attempts to coopt reformist language to its own ends to justify and grow the system. Efforts in California to implement a strategy
of decarceration for seriously and terminally ill prisoners through compassionate release have been co-opted by that state, for
example. California anti-prison activists have argued that prisons are ill-equipped to deal with the needs of seriously and terminally
ill prisoners and therefore they should be released to their families or to hospices in their communities. However, in an effort to keep
people in prison and increase the number of beds within the system, the rhetoric deployed by anti-prison activists to persuade
politicians and the general public that people in prison who are dying deserve to die with dignity is being used by the California
Department of Corrections itself. The CDC is now arguing for the creation of hospices within prisons and corrections-controlled
skilled nursing facilities in the community that could house prisoners in locked wings.9 This rhetorical appropriation has had a
secondary effect on the prison population by obstructing activist efforts to prevent people, whose seriously compromised health
render them particularly vulnerable to the harms of imprisonment from going to prison in the first place-mainly because the State
can argue that such people's health will no longer be compromised during imprisonment, so the argument goes, because there are
places within the prison to accommodate them.10 Because the rhetoric of public safety has become so entrenched, the
State can make the claim that the expansion of the system into skilled nursing care is necessary because a
person in prison is a threat to society merely by virtue of her status as a prisoner, regardless of her physical or
mental capacity. In fact, the strength of those arguments has increased to the point of absurdity: ostensibly out of security concerns,
in 2004 California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have saved California millions of dolllars by allowing
the early release of the 13 people in California's prisons determined to be permanently unable to tend to any of their daily needs or in
a vegetative state. To ensure that rhetoric aimed at reducing the suffering of people in prison is not used to justify prison expansion,
we can work to ensure that decarceration strategies are intrinsically linked to the rhetoric we use. For example, "compassion" and
"dignity" for people facing terminal or serious illness in prison should always be linked with "release" and policy aimed at expanding
corrections should be resisted. Moreover, we must make and reaffirm the argument that "compassion" and "dignity," as well as
"treatment" and "rehabilitation," are fundamentally at odds with the goals of punishment and prisons. 3. USING STRATEGIES
THAT CREATE CLASSES OF "DESERVING" VS. "UNDESERVING" PEOPLE IN PRISON TO MAINTAIN
THE SYSTEM Because for changes to the system has become so limited, in many instances reformers rely on
arguments that have the potential to create short-term solutions for some people in the existing framework for
arguments prison at the expense of a longer-term vision to improve life for all people in prison. The Right then seizes on these
efforts to consolidate existing notions about safety, justice, and the necessity of prisons . For instance, when
reformers argue that we should decriminalize petty offenses so that the police can go after the "real" criminals, the approach fits
perfectly into the Right's strategy of fear-mongering by evoking the need for "public safety" that is used to justify maintaining the
system or increasing its punitive response to all others. In response, we can frame our arguments in ways that avoid
pitting one category of prisoner against another. In a campaign to get rid of three-strikes policies for instance, we can
argue that imprisoning people is not making communities safer and that instead we should invest the resources that go into
incarceration into programs that would allow people to re-enter their communities and be safe and healthy. And we can argue
that as a strategic decarceration approach, abolishing three strikes is a step toward eliminating the prison as a central feature
of contemporary life. 4. ABOLISHING PART OF THE SYSTEM AT THE EXPENSE OF A LONG-TERM GOAL
OF ENDING THE SYSTEM In many instances, the Right seizes upon political strategies that focus on
reforming small parts of the criminal justice system to ensure maintenance of the broader system as a
whole. For example, in recent years efforts to abolish the death penalty have gained support in the general
public. Unfortunately, the rhetoric of death penalty abolitionists in favor of life imprisonment has limited the terms of the debate
around how to address violence and consolidated the idea that imprisonment is the only viable solution. This approach also
obscures the fact that people who are targeted for the death penalty, who would then end up in prison for
life, are disproportionately poor people of color and mentally ill people of all races . Similarly, the rhetoric of the
increasingly popular Innocence Projects, which are geared at aiding only the factually innocent, is taken up to limit the terms of the
debate around who in prison deserves legal assistance or public attention to just the innocent. This approach again obscures the
abuses that occur against all imprisoned people and the fact that communities of color and poor people of all races are targeted for
imprisonment. In response to these failings, we can use work directed at a specific population or sub-issue to highlight the broader
violence and failings of the prison system as a whole. We can work to abolish the death penalty because it is the ultimate expression
of the power of the State to enact violence and because it is a way to eliminate people who are "undesirable" from the perspective of
the State - poor people, people of color and people with mental illnesses. We can work to free the innocent as a means of highlighting
the inequities that impact all people in prison and call in to question the integrity of prisons more broadly.
Its really bad
Shaylor and Chandler 2005 (Cassandra, and Cynthia Chandler. "Reform and Abolition: Points of
Tension and Connection." Defending Justice. N.p., Web. 23 July 2015.
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/organizing/shaylor_reform.html, LB)
Reformers historically focused on conditions in prisons. Proponents of women’s rights who were alarmed by sexual
violence against women in co-ed prisons argued for separate institutions for women for instance.3 Absent a radical critique of
prisons themselves, concerns about conditions for women were used as a justification for the birth and
mass expansion of the women’s prison system4 where rampant abuse of women continues .5 In fact, one of the
legacies of prison reform (as opposed to radical critique and resistance) is the expansion of the prison industrial complex and the
increasing use of the prison as a mechanism of social control and State violence.6 The history of prison reform efforts
reveals that mere reform fails to address the inequalities, oppression, and state violence upon which the
institution of the prison is built, leaving the violent foundation intact and rendering ineffective attempts
to relieve the suffering of oppressed people confined within it.7Moreover, all too often such reform efforts are
re-appropriated by the Right and used to strengthen the prison industrial complex and to make it more
impervious to critique, resulting in bigger, "better," and more numerous prisons housing increasing
numbers of oppressed people.8 In the contemporary era of the prison, the Right has used a number of
strategies to build the system on the backs of reform efforts.
At: generic pic
Doesn’t solve – probably makes it worse
Raechel 2014 (animal rights and prison abolition: why I don’t support prosecuting animal abusers,
10/8/15, http://rebelgrrlkitchen.com/2014/10/08/animal-rights-and-prison-abolition-why-i-dontsupport-prosecuting-animal-abusers/, LB)
But none of that is getting at my actual point. My point is that prison doesn’t fix or change anything. In fact, prisons are more
likely to perpetuate the very things that get people incarcerated in the first place. That is to say, they
exacerbate violence, racism, sexism, etc. because they are inhumane institutions. This brings me directly to the
story about Robinson and all the other attempts made by animal advocacy organizations to prosecute animal abusers. If animal
liberation is about practicing more compassion toward living creatures, we cannot rely on the PIC to fix
humans who have not practiced compassion. The chances of people experiencing and being enabled to practice more
compassion in prison is slim to none. Rather than looking at the root of the problem in any criminal case—in this
one, a society that enables a human to be so violent and cruel to an animal—we lock people up as a
distraction. As Angela Davis notes, the PIC “relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the
problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism. ”
Capitalism and white supremacy are systems that rely on alienation and dehumanization, so is it any
wonder that animal abusers exist within this kind of economic system and culture? The PIC is an extension of
this system, and thus is not an institution that has any interest in actually addressing the root of the problem. When animal
rights activists support “tough on crime” approaches to animal abuse, they are strengthening the PIC . The
PIC is not a friend to animal rights. The PIC is not an institution that will teach lessons about being better to
living creatures. So, what’s the alternative? Prison abolitionists have been theorizing and practicing alternatives
to the carceral state for decades. It will not be an easy road, but there is evidence that transformative
justice, rather than punitive “justice,” is possible. Groups like INCITE! and Critical Resistance have discussed
moving towards community accountability and committing to addressing the political and economic
systems that create violence in the first place. I highly recommend visiting these sites for more reading:
The counterplan misses the point – we shouldn’t focus on the “criminals”, rather,
the criminal justice system itself. Abolition is a process not a goal, which means
perm do the counterplan subsumes their offense
Davis 10 (Angela Y. University of California Santa Cruz History of Consciousness Department, Humanities Division, Feminist
Studies Department. “Are Prisons Obsolete?”. November 2010. http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wpcontent/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf)//JuneC//
"Forget about reform; it's time to talk about abolishing jails and prisons in American society ... Still-abolition?
Where do
you put the prisoners? The 'criminals'? What's the alternative? First, having no alternative
at all would create less crime than the present criminal training centers do. Second, the
only full alternative is building the kind of society that does not need prisons: A decent
redistribution of power and income so as to put out the hidden fire of burning envy that
now flames up in crimes of property-both burglary by the poor and embezzlement by the
affluent. And a decent sense of community that can support, reintegrate and truly rehabilitate those who suddenly become filled
with fury or despair, and that can face them not as objects-'criminals'-but as people who have committed illegal acts, as have almost
all of us." -Arthur Waskow, Institute for Policy Studies129 If jails and prisons are to be abolished, then what will replace them? This
is the puzzling question that often interrupts further consideration of the prospects for abolition. Why should it be so
difficult to imagine alternatives to our current system of incarceration? There are a
number of reasons why we tend to balk at the idea that it may be possible to eventually
create an entirely different-and perhaps more egalitarian-system of justice. First of all, we
think of the current system, with its exaggerated dependence on imprisonment, as an
unconditional standard and thus have great difficulty envisioning any other way of dealing
with the more than two million people who are currently being held in the country's jails,
prisons, youth facilities, and immigration detention centers . Ironically, even the anti-death penalty
campaign tends to rely on the assumption that life imprisonment is the most rational alternative to capital punishment. As
important as it may be to abolish the death penalty, we should be conscious of the way the contemporary campaign against capital
punishment has a propensity to recapitulate the very historical patterns that led to the emergence of the prison as the dominant
form of punishment. The death penalty has coexisted with the prison, though imprisonment was supposed to serve as an alternative
to corporal and capital punishment. This is a major dichotomy. A critical engagement with this dichotomy would involve taking
seriously the possibility of linking the goal of death penalty abolitionism with strategies for prison abolition. It
is true that if
we focus myopically on the existing system-and perhaps this is the problem that leads to
the assumption that imprisonment is the only alternative to death-it is very hard to
imagine a structurally similar system capable of handling such a vast population of
lawbreakers. If, however, we shift our attention from the prison, perceived as an isolated
institution, to the set of relationships that comprise the prison industrial complex, it may
be easier to think about alternatives. In other words, a more complicated framework may
yield more options than if we simply attempt to discover a single substitute for the prison
system. The first step, then, would be to let go of the desire to discover one single
alternative system of punishment that would occupy the same footprint as the prison
system.
The disad misses the point - It’s fundamentally a question of where and by whom
the violence occurs – global sovereign violence is infinitely worse than petty
communal crimes
Guenther 12 (Lisa N. Vanderbilt University, Department of Philosophy “Biting the Bullet on Prison Abolition”. 15 February
2012. New APPS. http://www.newappsblog.com/2012/02/biting-the-bullet-on-prison-abolition.html)//JuneC//
In a recent article in n+1 called "Raise the Crime Rate," Christopher Glazek poses an uncommon question: Where have all the violent
criminals gone? Homicides in New York have fallen from 2,245 in 1990 to 536 in 2010. The number of sexual assaults across the US
has fallen by 85% from 1980 to 2005. Has the US suddenly become a kinder, gentler nation? Or have "stop and frisk" policing
strategies succeeded in preventing violent crime by separating the "sharks" from the "dolphins," as Adam Gopnik recently argued in
"The Caging of America"? Yes and no -- or rather, no and yes. Glazek argues that violent crime has not, in fact,
fallen across the country; rather, the burden of violence has shifted from the street to the
prison, where it has become largely invisible to the public. In the same time period that
street violence declined, the US prison population quadrupled, reaching 2.3 million
prisoners in 2008. The US now has the largest prison population in the world, second only to Stalin's USSR in the history of
the world. The streets may be safer then they were 20 years ago, but in the meantime, we have
become a prison state. We tolerate the arrest, incarceration and solitary confinement of a
full 2% of our fellow citizens, and so we tolerate the conditions under which hundreds of
thousands of prisoners are raped every year -- to the point where the United States may
now be "the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for
women." Gopnik and Glazek agree that the mass incarceration of Americans has reached epidemic proportions. But while
Gopnik's liberal solution only compounds the problem, as I have argued elsewhere, Glazek challenges us to find a radical solution to
a radical problem: The US prison system doesn’t need reform—it needs to be abolished. Like
slavery in the 19th century, and civil rights in the 20th century, prison abolition in the 21st
century can only be accomplished by a popular movement as radical and uncompromising
as the movement that set up the prison regime in the first place. If prison abolition
means an increased crime rate, so be it. If it means legalizing narcotics, let's do it. If it means executing more
people, then prison abolitionists "should be ready to advocate a massive expansion of the death penalty if that’s what it takes to
move the discussion forward." On this last point, I strongly disagree with Glazek; the American death penalty is caught up in the
same dynamics of racist and class oppression that haunts the prison system. But I take his point that, if we want to
dismantle the prison state that all Americans currently inhabit, whether or not they are
behind bars, then we must be willing to take radical action. Glazek writes: Advocating on behalf
of criminals is much easier when they haven’t committed any violent crime. And yet this
misses the point of the prison crisis: you cannot relieve the suffering of the prison
population without increasing safety risks for the rest of us. And increasing those risks,
from a moral standpoint, is the right thing to do. Who, on the left or on the right, will take up the
ethical and political challenge of prison abolition? Who will bite that bullet? It seems more likely that states will disinvest in the
prison industrial complex in times of economic strain, as California and other states have already begun to do - and then reinvest in
them when the promise of lucrative profits return. But these "reforms" leave the moral problem of mass
incarceration unaddressed. For every prisoner released under cost-saving measures, there
are hundreds of prisoners whose daily caloric intake has been forcibly reduced, or who are
forced to pay for their "room and board" in prison. Prisoners are a convenient target for
state violence; they did the crime, so it seems only reasonable that they should do the time.
The logic of retribution, and even of rehabilitation, is essentially economic;
prisoners owe a "debt to society" for violating the terms of the social contract. What
would a "moral" response to the prison state look like? Glazek seems to be saying something like: We owe a debt to
those who are "paying their debt to society." Our streets are safer because they are behind bars. We
must be willing to tolerate a little more risk - and probably a lot more public investment in
better schools, better social welfare programs, better job creation programs (by which I
don't mean tax cuts for "job creators") - in order to make good on our end of the bargain. Is
this ultimately a confirmation of the economic logic that currently drives the prison industrial complex and the US prison state?
Maybe. But at least someone has had the guts to provoke, rather than placate. Everyone who cares about freedom and democracy
(whatever those words mean) should read this article.
At: Rapist pic
Doesn’t solve
Critical Resistance no date (what we believe, critical resistance,
http://pomo.cca.edu/~randerson2/interactive1/future/prototype/what.html, LB)
Obviously, murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children are very serious problems, and obviously, acts of
great harm bring up feelings of anger and fear. Given how grave these problems are, we need to examine whether
locking someone in a cage is the best way to prevent these harms? Public Policy 101 dictates that the solution needs
to address the problem. It is disastrous public policy to propose ill suited solutions simply because you don't
solve the problem. It is also important to note that of the approximately 2.5 million people locked in US prisons and
jails only a very small number - about 1 % -- are there for these horrendous offenses. Many people do not
believe that locking someone in a cage is an answer to drug addiction or poverty. If locking someone up
does not address these problems, why would locking someone in a cage be any more of an effective answer
to harm between people? Prisons are not about reducing harm in our communities and in fact, our own
experiences and studies have found that imprisonment actually serves to destabilize our communities.
Prisons are violent institutions that only perpetuate violence and prisons as a public policy solution have
failed to create safe communities.
No one deserves to be locked up – creating communities which work to resolve ‘the
real bad people’ is a more effective strategy that prisons
Spade et al 2011 (Dean, Captive Genders: BUILDING AN ABOLITIONIST TRANS AND QUEER
MOVEMENT WITH EVERYTHING WE’VE GOT. Oakland, CA: AK, 2011,
http://theloon2013.wikispaces.com/file/view/Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-andPrison-Industrial-Complex.pdf, LB)
Although we understand that transgender and gender-non-conforming people in prisons, jails, and
detention centers experience egregious and often specific forms of violence—including sexual assault,
rape, medical neglect and discrimination, and humiliation based on transphobic norms—we recognize
that all people impacted by the prison industrial complex are facing severe violence. Instead of saying that
transgender people are the “most” oppressed in prisons, we can talk about the different forms of violence that people
impacted by the prison industrial complex face, and how those forms of violence help maintain the status
quo common sense that the “real bad people”—the “rapists,” “murderers,” “child molesters,” in some
cases now the “bigots”—deserve to be locked up. Seeking to understand the specific arrangements that cause certain
communities to face particular types of violence at the hands of police and in detention can allow us to develop solidarity around
shared and different experiences with these forces and build effective resistance that gets to the roots of these problems. Building
arguments about trans people as “innocent victims” while other prisoners are cast as dangerous and
deserving of detention only undermines the power of a shared resistance strategy that sees imprisonment
as a violent, dangerous tactic for everybody it touches. we know that the push for hate crimes laws as the
solution to anti-queer and -trans violence will never actually address the fundamental reasons why we are
vulnerable to violence in the first place or why homophobia and transphobia are encouraged in our
cultures. Individualizing solutions like hate crimes laws create a false binary of “perpetrator” and “victim” or
“bad” and “good” people without addressing the underlying systemic problem, and often strengthen that
problem. In place of this common sense, we understand that racism, state violence, and capitalism are the root
causes of violence in our culture, not individual “bigots” or even prison guards. We must end the cycle of
oppressed people being pitted against one another.
Prisons fail at reformation but the AFF solves it
Spade 12 -- lawyer, writer, and Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law, (Dean,
“Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You,” Duke University Press Nov 1, 2012, tony)
4. Prisons aren’t places to put serial rapists and murderers, prisons are the serial rapists and
murderers. If we acknowledge that the vast majority of people in prisons and jails are there because of
poverty and racism, not because they are “dangerous” or violent, and if we acknowledge that prisons and
jail utterly fail to make anyone who spends time in them healthier or less likely to engage in violence, and
if we recognize that prisons and jail are spaces of extreme violence, and that kidnapping and caging
people, not to mention exposing them to nutritional deprivation, health care deprivation, and physical
attack is violence, it becomes clear that criminalization and immigration enforcement increase rather than
decrease violence overall.
Prisons actually make it worse – decarceration also solves the impact
McLeod 15 -- Associate Professor, Georgetown University Law Center (Allegra, “Prison Abolition and
Grounded Justice,” UCLA Law Review, Number 1156, http://www.uclalawreview.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf, tony)
This Article introduces to legal scholarship the first sustained discussion of prison abolition and what I
will call a “prison abolitionist ethic.” Prisons and punitive policing produce tremendous brutality,
violence, racial stratification, ideological rigidity, despair, and waste. Meanwhile, incarceration and
prison-backed policing neither redress nor repair the very sorts of harms they are supposed to
address—interpersonal violence, addiction, mental illness, and sexual abuse, among
others. Yet despite persistent and increasing recognition of the deep problems that attend U.S.
incarceration and prisonbacked policing, criminal law scholarship has largely failed to consider how the
goals of criminal law—principally deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and retributive justice—might
be pursued by means entirely apart from criminal law enforcement. Abandoning prison-backed
punishment and punitive policing remains generally unfathomable. This Article argues that the
general reluctance to engage seriously an abolitionist framework represents a failure of moral, legal, and
political imagination. If abolition is understood to entail simply the immediate tearing down of all prison
walls, then it is easy to dismiss abolition as unthinkable. But if abolition consists instead of an aspirational
ethic and a framework of gradual decarceration, which entails a positive substitution of other regulatory
forms for criminal regulation, then the inattention to abolition in criminal law scholarship and reformist
discourse comes into focus as a more troubling absence. Although violent crime prevention and
proportional punishment of wrongdoing purportedly justify imprisonment, this
Article illuminates how the ends of criminal law might be accomplished in large
measure through institutions aside from criminal law administration. More
specifically, this Article explores a form of grounded preventive justice neglected in existing scholarly,
legal, and policy accounts. Grounded preventive justice offers a positive substitutive account of abolition
that aims to displace criminal law enforcement through meaningful justice reinvestment to strengthen the
social arm of the state and improve human welfare. This positive substitutive abolitionist framework
would operate by expanding social projects to prevent the need for carceral responses, decriminalizing
less serious infractions, improving the design of spaces and products to reduce opportunities for
offending, redeveloping and “greening” urban spaces, proliferating restorative forms of redress, and
creating both safe harbors for individuals at risk of or fleeing violence and alternative livelihoods for
persons subject to criminal law enforcement. By exploring prison abolition and grounded
preventive justice in tandem, this Article offers a positive ethical, legal, and institutional
framework for conceptualizing abolition, crime prevention, and grounded justice together.
Prisons Neg - Case
Case
1nc – enemy creation
The freedom they endorse relies on the premise of a vanquished enemy that reifies
the structure of oppression
Brown 95—prof at UC Berkely (Wendy, States of Injury, 7-8) DJ
But this opens rather than settles the problem of how to formulate a dis- course of freedom appropriate to contesting contemporary antidemocratic configurations of power.
One of the ironies of what Nietzsche boldly termed the “instinct for freedom” lies in its inceptive selfcancellation, its crossing of itself in its very first impulse. Initial figurations of freedom are inevitably reactionary in the
sense of emerging in reaction to perceived injuries or constraints of a regime from within its own
terms. Ideals of freedom ordinarily emerge to vanquish their imagined immediate enemies , but in this
move they frequently recycle and reinstate rather than transform the terms of
domination that generated them. Consider exploited workers who dream of a world in which work has been abolished, blacks who imagine
images of
freedom perform mirror reversals of suffering without transforming the organization of the activity
through which the suffering is produced and without addressing the subject constitution that
domination effects, that is, the constitution of the social categories , “workers,” “blacks/’ “women,” or
“teenagers.**¶It would thus appear that it is freedom’s relationship to identity—its promise to address a social injury or
marking that is itself constitutive of identity—that yields the paradox in which the first
imaginings of freedom are always constrained by and potentially even require the very structure of
oppression that freedom emerges to oppose. This, I think, is not only a patently Foucaultian point but is contained as well in Marx’s argument
a world without whites, feminists who conjure a world either without men or without sex, or teenagers who fantasize a world without parents. Such
that “political emancipation” within liberalism conceived for- mal political indifference to civil particularity as liberation because politi- cal privilege according to civil
particularity appeared as the immediate nature of the domination perpetrated by feudal and Christian monarchy. “True human emancipation” was Marx’s formula for escaping
the innately contextual and historically specific, hence limited, forms of free- dom. True human emancipation, achieved at the end of history, conjured for Marx not simply
liberation from particular constraints but freedom that was both thoroughgoing and permanent, freedom that was neither partial nor evasive but temporally and spatially
absolute. However, since true human emancipation eventually acquired for Marx a negative refer-¶ent (capitalism) and positive content (abolition of capitalism), m time it too
would reveal its profoundly historicizcd and thus limited character. Invoking Marx recalls a second dimension of this paradox in which freedom responds to a particular practice
freedom premised upon an already
vanquished enemy keeps alive, in the manner of a melancholic logic, a threat that works as
of domination whose terms are then often reinstalled in its practice. When institutionalized,
domination in the form of an absorbing ghostly battle with the past .7 Institutionalized, freedom ar- rayed against a particular image
of unfreedom sustains that image, which dominates political life with its specter long after it has been vanquished and preempts appreciation of new dangers to freedom posed
by institu- tions designed to hold the past in check. Yet the very institutions that are erected to vanquish the historical threat also recuperate it as a form of political anxiety; so,
for example, functions the “state of nature" or the “arbitrary sovereign*' in the liberal political imagination.
1nc – intersectionality good
The AFF’s single issue approach to prisons ignores the multifaceted nature of the
issue – turns case
Spade 13 -- lawyer, writer, and Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law (Dean,
School of Law, Seattle University, "Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform," Signs, Vol. 38, No. 4,
Summer 2013, tony)
The analytical approach that Crenshaw termed “intersectionality” more than twenty years ago is not about
addition. It describes a way of thinking about subjection that rejects both the
declaration of a universal experience of a given vector of harm and the notion that
people affected by multiple vectors are enduring conditions that are simply
experiences of single-axis harm added together. For that reason, resistance conceived
through single axis frameworks can never transform conditions of intersectional violence and harm, and
failure to depart from single-axis analysis produces reforms that contribute to and collaborate with those
conditions ðSmith 2006Þ. Those conditions cannot be changed merely by declaring that single-axis
discrimination is illegal. Instead, critical scholars and activists from many movements have shown that
governance processes involved in population control deploy norms that sort populations into those whose
lives must be cultivated and protected and those cast as threats and drains. The production of
administrative classification systems that distribute life chances, whether those classifications are overtly
linked to racial and gender categories or facially neutral, is coconstitutive with the ongoing processes of
state-building that produce the United States. Racialization processes formed the United
States and continue, through evolving methods and mechanisms, to produce a
maldistribution of life chances that movements struggle to transform. The past fifty
years have seen an important shift in the technologies that produce these conditions. We have moved
toward formal legal equality and purported neutrality in law and policy, yet the racial wealth divide has
grown, racialized-gendered criminalization has skyrocketed, and immigration enforcement is more
significant a state project than ever United for a Fair Economy 2006; Gilmore 2007Þ. 16 Racism is
declared over, but the project of caging and exiling people of color is bigger than ever. Women,
people with disabilities, queer and trans people, immigrants, and indige- nous
people are the ones most affected by these conditions. Single-axis frameworks that have
attended legal equality demands cannot address the conditions of despair and violence that intersectional
resistance seeks to transform. Demands for change that aim at the root causes of these problems place
these issues in the context of genealogies of racialization that link the foundational violences of the United
States to today’s conditions and reject legal framings that obscure intersectional analysis. The current
iteration of critical intersectional interventions invites and demands imagining ways of life that US law
certainly cannot comprehend: life without prisons or borders, life without gender and health norms, life
without work, wealth, or poverty as we currently know them.
1nc – prison improving
Prisons are getting substantially better – incarceration rates are declining rapidly
Garland et al 14 -- Missouri State University, USA (Brett, Contributing Authors: Nancy Hogan, Eric
Wodahl, Aida Hass, Mary K Stohr, Eric Lambert, “Decarceration and its possible effects on inmates, staff,
and communities,” Punishment & Society 2014, Vol. 16(4) pp. 449-45, tony)
The imprisonment rate for adults nationally had declined from a high of 506 people in state or federal
prisons per 100,000 residents in 2007 to 492 in 2011 ( Carson and Sabol, 2012: 1; Glaze and Parks, 2012; West et al.,
2010: 2), although the incarceration rate had significantly decelerated for a much longer time . In the mid1990s, the incarceration rate began to level, as the increase from the 1995 rate of 411 to the 2005 rate of 419
was 19 percent. This increase was far below the incarceration rate growth of 82 percent from 1975 and
1985 and 103 percent from 1985 to 1995 (Austin and Irwin, 2001; Guerino et al., 2011). Recent declines in prisoner
populations have been observed at state, local, but not federal, levels and affect both women and men;
though the number of males incarcerated in state prisons has declined in both 2010 and 2011, the number of
females in state prisons declined in 2009, 2010, and 2011 (Glaze and Parks, 2012). A greater percentage of those who remained
incarcerated were violent offenders, while there were fewer drug offenders in these ranks. As indicated from Bureau of Justice
Statistics data, 24 states experienced a decrease in imprisonment rates from 2008 to 2009, 25 states had declines in 2010 from
2009, and 26 states experienced decreases from 2010 to 2011. These states represented every region of the country, from California
to Rhode Island, and from Michigan to Texas (Carson and Sabol, 2012: 3; Guerino et al., 2011; West et al., 2010). Notably, of the 24
states where there were increases in prison populations in 2011, 11 had experienced decreases in those populations from 2009 to
2010 and in some of those states their populations were still not as high as they had been in 2009 (Carson and Sabol, 2012: 3). ‘‘The
combined U.S. prison population decreased 0.3 percent in 2010, the first decline since 1972’’ (Guerino et al.,
2011: 1) and that trend continued in 2011. Only in two Northeastern states and one MidAtlantic —New York, New
Jersey, and Maryland—were these declines a discernible trend over the last decade; for example, New
York and New Jersey witnessed 20 percent and 19 percent reductions in their state prison populations,
respectively, between 1999 and 2009 (Greene and Mauer, 2010). The 2009 declines in Illinois, Michigan,
Delaware, and Texas had been preceded by anemic growth rates earlier in the decade (West et al., 2010).
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the declines in prison populations in states where they occurred were directly
attributable to declines in admissions. Notably, and as indicated, not all states experienced such declines—25 states in 2010 and 24
states in 2011, from all across the United States, instead saw increases in their use of imprisonment (Carson and Sabol, 2012: 3;
Guerino et al., 2011: 1; West et al., 2010: 2). It is important to note that 70 percent of the decrease in state prison
populations from 2010 to 2011 was attributable to California’s court mandated release of inmates
stemming from a major US Supreme Court decision (Brown v. Plata, 2011; Carson and Sabol, 2012). Overall, though,
the declines in the last few years represented the first time in decades that the majority of states did not experience an increase in
prison populations. Stabilizing and shrinking inmate populations have not been restricted to prisons. In fact, declines in jails have
been steeper. From 2008 to midyear 2009, inmate populations in jails declined by 1.1 percent, then again by 2.5 percent from 2009
to 2010, and declined again by 1.7 percent from 2010 to 2011, the third decline in as many years and only the third since 1982 (Glaze
and Parks, 2012: 8; Minton, 2011: 1, 2013: 5). However, from midyear 2011 to midyear 2012 the average daily
population in jails increased slightly, by 0.1 percent, an increase which is mostly attributed to California
moving its inmates from prisons to jails following a major US Supreme Court decision (Minton, 2013: 5). The
incarceration rate in jails also went down to 237 per 100,000 residents in 2012 (which is up one point from
2011), with most of the decreases concentrated in 111 of 170 largest jails with populations of a 1000 or more inmates (Minton, 2011:
1–2, 2013: 5–6). in 2009, 2010, and 2011 (Glaze and Parks, 2012). A greater percentage of those who remained incarcerated were
violent offenders, while there were fewer drug offenders in these ranks. As indicated from Bureau of Justice Statistics data, 24 states
experienced a decrease in imprisonment rates from 2008 to 2009, 25 states had declines in 2010 from 2009, and 26 states
experienced decreases from 2010 to 2011. These states represented every region of the country, from California to
Rhode Island, and from Michigan to Texas (Carson and Sabol, 2012: 3; Guerino et al., 2011; West et al., 2010). Notably,
of the 24 states where there were increases in prison populations in 2011, 11 had experienced decreases in
those populations from 2009 to 2010 and in some of those states their populations were still not as high
as they had been in 2009 (Carson and Sabol, 2012: 3). ‘‘The combined U.S. prison population decreased 0.3 percent in 2010,
the first decline since 1972’’ (Guerino et al., 2011: 1) and that trend continued in 2011. Only in two Northeastern states and one
MidAtlantic —New York, New Jersey, and Maryland—were these declines a discernible trend over the last decade; for example, New
York and New Jersey witnessed 20 percent and 19 percent reductions in their state prison populations, respectively, between 1999
and 2009 (Greene and Mauer, 2010). The 2009 declines in Illinois, Michigan, Delaware, and Texas had been preceded by anemic
growth rates earlier in the decade (West et al., 2010). According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the declines in
prison populations in states where they occurred were directly attributable to declines in admissions.
Notably, and as indicated, not all states experienced such declines—25 states in 2010 and 24 states in
2011, from all across the United States, instead saw increases in their use of imprisonment (Carson and Sabol,
2012: 3; Guerino et al., 2011: 1; West et al., 2010: 2). It is important to note that 70 percent of the decrease in state
prison populations from 2010 to 2011 was attributable to California’s court mandated release of inmates
stemming from a major US Supreme Court decision (Brown v. Plata, 2011; Carson and Sabol, 2012). Overall, though,
the declines in the last few years represented the first time in decades that the majority of states did not experience an increase in
prison populations. Stabilizing and shrinking inmate populations have not been restricted to prisons. In fact, declines in jails have
been steeper. From 2008 to midyear 2009, inmate populations in jails declined by 1.1 percent, then again by
2.5 percent from 2009 to 2010, and declined again by 1.7 percent from 2010 to 2011, the third decline in
as many years and only the third since 1982 (Glaze and Parks, 2012: 8; Minton, 2011: 1, 2013: 5). However, from
midyear 2011 to midyear 2012 the average daily population in jails increased slightly, by 0.1 percent, an
increase which is mostly attributed to California moving its inmates from prisons to jails following a
major US Supreme Court decision (Minton, 2013: 5). The incarceration rate in jails also went down to 237
per 100,000 residents in 2012 (which is up one point from 2011), with most of the decreases concentrated in 111 of 170
largest jails with populations of a 1000 or more inmates (Minton, 2011: 1–2, 2013: 5–6).
1NC - Prisons good - better than alt
Prisons good -- better than the alternatives
Peter Koenig and Raymond E. James 75 (Peter Koenig and Raymond E. James -- J.D.
“Do We Need Prisons? An Exchange”, The New York Book Review, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1975/may/29/dowe-need-prisons-an-exchange/) //JS
To the Editors: I have just finished reading Mr. Garry Wills’s insightful contribution entitled “The Human Sewer” in the April 3rd issue of your excellent
publication, wherein he analyzed Tom Wicker’s new book. My hat is off to Mr. Wills for attempting to show where the American penal system has been
a flop. However, I note that, like many other antagonists of the penal status quo, Mr. Wills
fails to come up with a viable alternative
to this madness we call penal “rehabilitation.” Although only thirty-four years of age, I have been confined for seventeen of the past twenty-two
years and am now doing an eight-year stint for bank robbery. I find that, unfortunately, we still do have a need for prisons in
America. What does Mr. Wills suggest we do with people who go about chronically molesting children, or continually
stealing and burglarizing, or is a four or five time loser for armed robbery (like myself)? Does he feel these persons need
to be loosed out upon society to prey at will upon innocent victims whose last line of defense is a questionable police department; as in the case of Inez
Garcia, who had to seek her own form of retribution (defense), only to be caught up in this sick and twisted matrix of criminal justice herself? I trust
that Mr. Wills can answer these questions, because I have been trying to do so in my own case for many years, and one could say I have a direct
personal interest at stake. I am working on an extensive volume dealing with the American criminal justice (?) system and if Mr. Wills can provide me
with the answers to the above questions perhaps I can make that tome much more insightful. Raymond E. James United States Penitentiary McNeil
Island, Washington
Solvency
Private Prisons
Private prisons mean they can’t solve
Filipovic 13 (Jill Filipovic - journalist, Yale graduated attorney, Winner of a 2014 Newswomen's Club of
New York Front Page Award for her global health reporting, June 13, 2013, America's private prison
system is a national disgrace, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/13/aclu-lawsuiteast-mississippi-correctional-facility) //JS
The privatization of traditional government functions – and big government payments to private contractors – isn't limited to
international intelligence operations like the National Security Agency. It's happening with little oversight in dozens of areas once
the province of government, from schools to airports to the military. The shifting of government responsibilities to private actors
isn't without consequence, as privatization often comes with a lack of oversight and a series of abuses. One
particularly stunning example is the American prison system, the realities of which should be a national disgrace. Some of
those realities are highlighted in a recent lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of prisoners
at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF). EMCF houses severely mentally ill prisoners, with the supposed intent of
providing both incarceration and treatment. Instead, the ACLU contends, the facility, which is operated by private contractors, is rife
with horrific abuses. As the ACLU states, it is "an extremely dangerous facility operating in a perpetual state of crisis, where
prisoners live in barbaric and horrific conditions and their basic human rights are violated daily." The complaint lists a litany
of such horrors, but here are a few highlights: rampant rapes. Placing prisoners in solitary confinement for weeks, months
or even years at a time, where the only way to get a guard's attention in an emergency is to set a fire. Rat infestations so bad
that vermin crawl over prisoners; sometimes, the rats are captured, put on leashes and sold as pets to the most severely mentally ill
inmates. Many suicide attempts, some successful. The untreated mentally ill throw feces, scream, start fires, electrocute
themselves and self-mutilate. Denying or delaying treatment for infections and even cancer. Stabbings, beatings and
other acts of violence. Juveniles being housed with adults, including one 16-year-old who was sexually assaulted by his adult cell
mate. Malnourishment and chronic hunger. Officers who deal with prisoners by using physical violence. One prisoner allegedly
attempted to hang himself. He was cut down by guards, given oxygen and put on supervision, but wasn't taken to an emergency
room, let alone given psychiatric care during the suicide watch. Without seeing a psychiatrist, his medication dosage was increased.
A severely ill 16-year-old with "a long history of being physically and sexually abused in addition to suffering from a traumatic brain
injury, limited intellectual functioning, self-harm, and psychosis" was moved to EMCF from a juvenile detention center. His cell
allegedly had a broken lock, and so other prisoners were able to enter. Five or six of them beat him. He was moved to a solitary
confinement unit and, when he voiced his suicidal ideations and asked to see a psychiatrist, was deemed "manipulating to be
moved". Another told prison mental health staff that he was depressed and thinking about about suicide. The treatment plan from
the prison psychologist was reportedly three words: "encourage behavioral compliance". After being asked to provide a urine
specimen, which he could not give because of a health condition, the ACLU reports: Mr. Roe began banging on his door, smeared
blood on the cell door window, threatened to commit suicide, and tied a rope around his neck. Officers sprayed excessive
amounts of Mace in his cell. According to witnesses, officers waited approximately 20 minutes before pulling Mr. Roe out of his
cell. By that time, he was non-responsive and cyanotic. He was taken, his hands and feet bound by zip-ties, to the hospital where he
was pronounced dead. For several days after Mr. Roe's death, medical staff continued to 'document' in the daily
segregation log that Mr. Roe appeared to be 'in good health and mood.'" These kinds of abuses are not relegated to
a single prison, but they also aren't inherent in any detention system. In the United States, though, they're business as usual.
Our prison system is increasingly built and run by for-profit corporations, who have a financial interest in increasing the number of
people in prison while decreasing the amount of money it costs to house them.
these are comparatively worse than the aff
Kalaidis 13 (Jen Kalaidis - Public Policy Program Assistant at Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute
at Hunter College, July 3, 2013, The Week, Are for-profit prisons more dangerous than traditional
prisons? http://theweek.com/articles/462921/are-forprofit-prisons-more-dangerous-than-traditionalprisons)//JS
From alleged mistreatment of prisoners to questionable lobbying intentions, private prisons have been making headlines for all the
wrong reasons lately. And as a growing number of U.S. inmates are being jailed in private prisons — the number of inmates in
private facilities increased by 37 percent between 2002 and 2009 — it's more important than ever to examine the policies and
practices carried out in these intuitions. Consider the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF), a private prison housing
mentally ill prisoners near Meridian, Miss. The prison recently made national news after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed a lawsuit against the Mississippi Department of Corrections — which outsources
prison duties to the EMCF — for allowing the prison to operate under allegedly "barbaric", "hyper-violent" and
"grotesquely filthy and dangerous" conditions, including rat-infested cells, non-working toilets, and a lack
of access to mental health services. In addition to EMCF being a "cesspool", the lawsuit also alleges that its prisoners are
being severely underfed. "All inmates report significant weight loss since arriving at EMCF, from ten to 60 pounds," said
physiatrist Terry A. Kupers, who studied the facility in 2011 on behalf of the ACLU. "From my direct observation it is clear that all
the men are much thinner, almost emaciated, in comparison to old snapshots I viewed in their charts or on their identity cards
showing them much heavier. For its part, while the ENCF acknowledges the prison has problems, it argues that it has been taking
measures to improve conditions. "Do we still have issues? Sure. It's a prison. It's the nature of the business. But we do everything we
can to make it better for the offenders and the employees," said then-Warden Frank Show in June. Similar allegations are made
against traditional government-funded prisons all the time. For instance, recently families of two inmates who allegedly died of heat
stroke in a state-run Texas prison announced they are bringing a wrongful death lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice (TDCJ). The families of the deceased inmates allege that as many as 13 prisoners have died from heatstroke since 2007. "Like
most other TDCJ units, the Gurney Unit inmate living areas are not air conditioned, and apparent indoor temperatures routinely
exceed 100 degrees," the lawsuit states. "As the body can no longer cool itself, body systems fail. If there is no immediate
intervention, extreme temperatures will cause death." TDCJ spokesperson Jason Clark said the TDCJ "takes precautions to help
reduce heat-related illness such as restricting activity during the hottest part of the day, providing water and ice in work and housing
areas and training staff to identify and treat those with heat-related illnesses." Yet Clark acknowledges there are limitations to this
strategy. "Many of TDCJ's facilities were built before the time that air conditioning was commonly installed," he explained. "Prisons
built in the 1980s and '90s didn't include air conditioning because of the added construction, maintenance and utility costs...
Retrofitting facilities with air conditioning would be extremely expensive." The Atlantic's Andrew Cohen argues these and other
recent controversies demonstrate the U.S. prison system is in the midst of "one of the darkest periods on record." But which are
worse for inmates: private for-profit prisons or their state-run counterparts? The answer is relatively simple. As bad as state-
run prisons can be, private prisons ultimately pose a greater threat to inmates because of their raison
d'être; they exist solely to make a profit off of incarcerated individuals. Like pretty much all other for-profit
enterprises, private prisons make money in part by cutting operating costs wherever possible . In most
industries, this can be done by reducing employee hours or buying goods wholesale or any number of other strategies. But when it
comes to housing inmates, cutting costs is done in a variety of troubling ways. In the case of the EMCF, the lawsuit alleges the facility
offered inmates a Spartan diet, grossly reduced access to health care, and essentially eliminated mental health services — in a facility
specifically for patients with mental illness. Other ways private prisons cut costs are by understaffing guards and other
prison employees, leading to increasingly dangerous conditions for both guards and inmates. An unfortunate
example: The 2004 riot at the Crowley County Correctional Facility (operated by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America)
in Olney Springs, Colo. What started as a fight between two rival prison gangs quickly morphed into a prison-wide riot in which the
inadequately staffed guards quickly lost control. After state law enforcement officials quelled the riot, the Colorado Department of
Corrections issued a report blaming the riot on the private prison's high staff turnover rate and inadequate staffing. But perhaps the
greatest threat private prisons pose to inmates is their constant need for inmates . While overall crime —
especially violent crime — has rapidly declined in recent years, the U.S. incarcerates more individuals than ever. This is great news
for the private prison industry. With private prisons receiving upwards of $200 per inmate per night, the more beds occupied, the
more revenue. Of course, the private prison industry doesn't like to frame it this way. The Correctional Corporation of America — the
largest private prison company in the country — claims its motivations are to rehabilitate prisoners, increase public safety, create
jobs, and save taxpayers money. Nowhere do they mention that seeking profits for themselves and their shareholders is part of their
business plan. Where things get tricky is the majority of incarcerated individuals in U.S. prisons are non-violent offenders either
serving drug sentences or having been arrested for their immigration statuses. While possession of illegal substances and an
undocumented immigration status have long been illegal under U.S. law, the kinds of harsh sentences today's offenders receive are a
relatively new phenomenon, tracing back to the anti-drug hysteria of the 1980s and the creation of programs such as the Department
of Homeland Security's "Operation Streamline," which have both contributed to a 790 percent increase in prison sentences in the
last three decades. So far, the private prison industry has spent $45 million in lobbying to keep these kinds of
harsh sentencing laws in place, reports the Associated Press. And the industry freely admits that without these laws,
private prisons would no longer be profitable: "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by
the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the
decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws," said a Corrections Corporation of America
2010 Annual Report. "Any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of
persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." Few
would argue the U.S. penal system operates efficiently and ethically 100 percent of the time. And while government-run
prisons have more than their fair share of problems, private prisons are creating a whole new set of
challenges.
Solutions
Their ontological rendering of politics—it creates theoretical dead-ends and
precludes any commonist ethics
Buck-Morss 13. Susan Buck-Morss, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate
Center, NYC, “A Commonist Ethics, ” in The Idea of Communism, 2013,
http://susanbuckmorss.info/text/commonist-ethics/) DJ
The First Point: Politics is not an ontology. The claim that the political is always ontological
needs to be challenged.1 It is not merely that the negative the case — that the political is never
ontological2 (as Badiou points out, a simple negation leaves everything in place3). Instead, what is called for is a
reversal of the negation: The ontological is never political.¶ It follows that the move from la politique
(everyday politics) to le politique (the very meaning of the political) is a one-way street. With all due respect to
Marcel Gauchet, Chantal Mouffe, Giorgio Agamben, and a whole slew of others, the attempt to discover within empirical
political life (la politique) the ontological essence of the political (le politique) leads theory into
a dead end from which there is no return to actual, political practice . There is nothing gained by this move from
the feminine to the masculine form. The post-metaphysical project of discovering ontological truth within lived
existence fails politically. It fails in the socially disengaged Husserlian-Heidegerian mode of bracketing the existenziell to
discover the essential nature of what “the political” is. And it fails in the socially critical, post-Foucauldian mode of
historicized ontology, disclosing the multiple ways of political being-in-the-world within particular,
cultural and temporal configurations.¶ This is not news. From the mid-1930s on, it was Adorno’s obsessive
concern, in the context of the rise of fascism, to demonstrate the failure of the ontological attempt to ground a
philosophy of Being by starting from the given world, or, in Heideggerian language, to move from the ontic,
that is, being [seiend] in the sense of that which is empirically given, to the ontological, that which is
essentially true of existence (Dasein as the “a priori structure” of “existentially”4). Adorno argued that any
ontology derived (or reduced5) from the ontic, turns the philosophical project into one big tautology .6 He
has a point, and the political implications are serious.¶ Ontology identifies. Identity was anathema to Adorno,
and nowhere more so than in its political implications, the identity between ruler and ruled that fascism affirmed. Indeed, even
parliamentary rule can be seen to presuppose a striving for identity, whereby consensus becomes an end
in itself, regardless of the truth content of that consensus.7 It is not that Heidegger’s philosophy (or any existential
ontology) is in-itself fascist (that would be an ontological claim). Rather, by resolving the question of Being before
subsequent political analyses, the latter have no philosophical traction . They are subsumed under
the ontological a prioris that themselves must remain indifferent to their content.8 Existential
ontology is mistaken in assuming that, once “the character of being ” (Heidegger) is conceptually grasped, it
will return us to the material, empirical world and allow us to gather its diversities and multiplicities
under philosophy’s own pre-understandings in ways adequate to the exigencies of collective action, the
demands of actual political life. In fact, the ontological is never political. A commonist (or communist) ontology
is a contradiction in terms.¶ But, you may ask, did not Marx himself outline in his early writings a full ontology based
on the classical, Aristotelian claim that man is by nature a social animal? Are not the 1844 manuscripts an elaboration of
that claim, mediated by a historically specific critique, hence an extended, socialontology of man’s
alienation from nature (including his own) and from his fellow man? Yes, but in actual, political life, this
ontological “man” does not exist.¶ Instead, we existing creatures are men and women, black and brown,
capitalists and workers, gay and straight, and the meaning of these categories of being is in no way stable .
Moreover, these differences matter less that whether we are unemployed, have prison records, or are in
danger of being exported. And no matter what we are in these ontic ways, our beings do not fit
neatly into our politics as conservatives, anarchists, evangelicals, Teaparty-supporters, Zionists,
Islamists, and (a few) Communists. We are social animals, yes, but we are also anti-social, and 0 are
thoroughly mediated by society’s contingent forms. Yes, the early Marx developed a philosophical
ontology. Nothing follows from this politically. Philosopher-king-styled party leaders are not thereby
legitimated, and the whole thorny issue of false consciousness (empirical vs. imputed/ascribed
[zugerechnectes] consciousness) cannot force a political resolution. At the same time, philosophical thought has
every right – and obligation — to intervene actively into political life. Here is Marx on the subject of intellectual
practice, including philosophizing:¶ But again when I am active scientifically, etc, — when I am engaged in activity which I can
seldom perform in direct community with others –- then I am social, because I am active as a man [human being9]. Not only is the
material of my activity given to me as a social product (as is even the language in which the thinker is active): my own existence is
social activity, and therefore that which I make of myself, I make of myself for society and with the consciousness ofmyself as a social
being. 10¶ Again, no matter how deeply one thinks one’s
way into this ontological generalization, no specific
political orientation follows as a consequence. It describes the intellectual work of Heidegger and Schmitt
every bit as much as it does that of Marx or of us ourselves.
Fails - Abolition Bad
Plan frees criminals - that’s bad
Saul Guevara (Saul Guevara -- writer for LASWC “The Word”, The Prison Industrial Complex: Abolishing Prisons Is Not the
Answer, http://thewordlasc.weebly.com/prisons-should-not-be-abolished--saul-guevara.html) //JS
According to Edmundo Oliveira, in his article “An Institution on Trial”, he argues that prisons shouldn’t be abolished .
He discusses the social, legal, ethical and psychological nature of prisons. He says that there is a necessity of punishment to
criminal actions in today’s society due to the high crime rates in the inner city. Also, he states that the penal system is
flawed when it comes down to their selection process that the prisons are only filled up to capacity with only poor people. Mr.
Oliveira also says that prisons have been abolished for those who they call “underground criminals”, they are the
people who are prestige, privilege or influenced. He says, “What should be done is not abolish prisons or imprison all and sundry,
but improve the efficiency of the criminal law”. Some people would differ and would say that abolishing prisons would be better
because the system is inherently flawed. Some say that crime rates are already high and wont chance significantly if prisons were
closed down. Others would say that keeping the prisons open is too expensive and that taxpayers are the ones that are paying right
out their pockets and not getting anything back from their investments while other private companies benefit from them. And the
rest of the population would say that abolishing prisons would work for most because it is morally wrong, illusionary, and that labels
are placed on people and that prisons prevents integration with the rest of the population ones a criminals sentence is over. People
who agree that prisons should be reformed say that if the people who were convicted of crimes were
released into public places, just walking down the street could be dangerous . Others say that crime rates
would go up dramatically because they would go back to doing what they were caught doing before they got sentenced to
prison. Prisoners would clash with the criminals out in the street and create more violence amongst each
other. They will probably unite and begin gangs to regain power and take over neighborhoods. It is said that deeper social issues
already existing within the community would also affect that crime rate.
Absolutist demands for carceral abolition doom the anti-prison movement to
failure by creating a winner-take-all scheme with no regard for implementation
Louis Michael Seidman 11, (Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown, Hyper-Incarceration and
Strategies of Disruption: Is There a Way Out, moritzlaw.osu.edu/osjcl/Articles/Volume9_1/Seidman.pdf)
DJ
Understanding the problems with ameliorative approaches naturally leads us to ask whether we can do
better. Suppose we forsake the goal of modest piecemeal reform and aim instead at radical transformation.
Strategies of this sort rest on the supposed fragile and vulnerable character of the ideology that justifies the system. On this view, it may seem that this
system is impregnable, but that is only an illusion. The careful and relentless exposure of the hypocrisy, brutality, and injustice at the base of the system
can bring it down.¶ These strategies are closely allied to important strands of the critical legal studies movement. Some people allied with the
movement (“crits”) believed that the internal contradictions of liberalism could be exploited to such an extent that the system could be revealed for
what it is—an empty shell that supports power and privilege only so long as we allow it to do so.54 ¶ Projects along these lines would, for example,
explore the contradictions in mainstream accounts of blameworthiness. Moral condemnation, on this view, amounts to no more than an ideological
cover for the exercise of power by some people over others.55 It does not follow, though, that the economic model can simply replace the moral model.
It, too, rests on unchallenged assumptions about what, precisely, counts as a “cost” and a “benefit”—about who is benefited and on whom the costs are
imposed.56¶ Once we clear away the ideological detritus, we are left with a simple question: Do we really want to live in a decent society? Critical Legal
Studies has many strands and many of its adherents had complicated positions. Still, at least in their optimistic moods, many crits thought that, with
the freedom provided by deconstruction of constraining structures of thought, people would make the right decision.57¶ I must confess to more than a
little attraction to this way of thinking. A fair amount of my own work has been influenced by it. As
a serious strategy for producing
change, though, it leaves much to be desired. One problem with focusing on micro-processes is that they may
be more deeply embedded than some crits supposed. ¶ It is true that as a logical or intellectual matter the justificatory standards
that shield the criminal justice system from criticism are quite vulnerable. No one has provided a good answer to the arguments deconstructing free will
on the one hand and instrumental rationality on the other, at least as they apply to our practices of criminal punishment. It
is nonetheless simply a
mistake to suppose that these structures of thought will collapse once they are shown to be incoherent.
They reflect ways of living and perceiving, rather than merely intellectual arguments. It will not do to try to
dismantle them so as to damage the system they protect; they are impervious to attack precisely because they protect that system .¶
Nor is it
obvious that if the structures were somehow dismantled, their collapse would
produce a more humane system. The structures serve functions that would have to be served by
something else if they disappeared. On the one hand, belief in personal responsibility and the possibility of moral choice is, itself, a
determinant of behavior. Without it, there might well be more crime. On the other hand, cost-benefit analysis is a check on wanton and
purposeless brutality. Without it, there might well be more punishment. ¶ As Meir Dan-Cohen pointed out years ago, we
would be well served if we could maintain “acoustic separation” between the mainstream and target communities.58 We could then inculcate personal
responsibility in the target community, thereby reducing crime, while convincing the mainstream community that members of the target community
have very constricted choices, thereby reducing punishment. We could convince the target community that it is instrumentally rational to obey the law
because of the strong possibility of punishment, while convincing the mainstream community of the instrumental rationality of reducing punishment
levels. But nobody has a clue how to maintain such separation or, indeed, how to induce either set of beliefs in the first place. In any event, advocates of
radical transformation want to dismantle these false categories altogether, rather than maintaining them for separate communities. ¶ Moreover, even
if a frontal assault on justificatory rationales were a more promising strategy, we would still need to give it
some specific programmatic content. Ameliorative strategies have their limits and problems, but at
least they consist of real proposals that are being, or might actually be, implemented.
What kind of program does radical deconstruction entail? ¶ It is not only naïve but also inexcusably
solipsistic to suppose that writing law review articles is such a program. Perhaps localized subversion holds
out greater promise,59 but there
is a remaining vagueness about what this subversion would consist of. In any event, as
invigorating and liberating as these individual acts of defiance may be, the chance of their sparking a global change
seems quite remote. ¶ A program of large-scale organization of target communities and building bridges
based on racial solidarity between those communities and mainstream African Americans seems more
promising. But there is no need to rehearse yet again the difficulties of mobilizing dispirited and isolated minority communities, the powerful
reasons middle class African Americans have for distancing themselves from those communities, or the panicked opposition among the privileged that
such organization produces. Moreover, even in this context, the problem of programmatic content remains. If
organizers offer no
practical programs at all, they appear unreasonable and utopian. If they offer such programs, they
fall back into the amelioration trap. ¶ In any event, as
a comfortable, wealthy, white academic, I am afraid that I am not
about to start knocking on doors in the inner city. As a personal matter, I nonetheless remain committed
to the practice of dismantling justificatory categories, but people like me need to give up on the absurd
claim that doing so promises immediate social transformation . The categories deserve attack because they
are false and constricting. The people who argue for them deserve censure because they should know better and because their arguments
provide a cover for an unjust status quo. Acts of rebellion, whether in law reviews or as localized subversion, are good in themselves. But
no one should suppose that these acts will ultimately solve our problems. And, in the meantime, the waste and
suffering from hyper-incarceration goes on unabated.
Bad - White Supremacists
Plan frees white supremacist
MDJ 1/20 (Marietta Daily Journal, January 20, 2015, Angie’s world: ‘Prison abolition’ good for killers, but the
rest of us? Not so much’, http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/26389319/article-Angie-s-world---Prisonabolition--good-for-killers--but-the-rest-of-us--Not-so-much?instance=home_editorial) //JS
On Tuesday, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the murder convictions and life sentences of those responsible for three especially
heinous crimes: Edward Wallace had earlier been found guilty of robbing and fatally shooting Kyle Moore, 17, as
he waited for a MARTA bus, pumping numerous bullets into him after he was already on the ground. Moore was a star football
player at Washington High School in Atlanta and was being recruited by Harvard, Brown, and other colleges. The day after the
shooting Wallace brazenly returned to the murder scene and signed a “signature page” next to a photo of the deceased that had been
erected at the site by Moore’s family. Wallace and his girlfriend then went to a local tattoo shop and had “Unknown killer” tattooed
on his arms. Police who later searched Wallace’s home also found rap lyrics he had written that said he targeted blacks, and if
one would not act, “I lay ’em flat. Then I put eight holes in his back.” Also Tuesday, the court upheld the conviction of Lester Casey
Griffin of Effingham County for the murder of his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son. An autopsy on the child found 118 distinct
external and internal injuries inflicted on the toddler during the two hours before his death. And also on Tuesday, the court upheld
the conviction of Quanitta Yvette Turner, 22, for smothering her 5-week-old baby to death to stop her from crying. Turner also
admitted to having earlier hit the baby at least eight times with a TV remote control to try and quiet her. Meanwhile, Sunday night,
on the campus of Kennesaw State University, the African-American Student Union hosted reheated ’60s radical Angela Davis,
who these days is a self-described “prison abolitionist.” Her SRO talk to 700-plus people touched on a variety of race and
gender-driven topics, but for more on her efforts to see prisons closed, we turn to her comments last spring to hard-left news site
“Democracy Now!” (That’s rich, isn’t it: A woman who espoused an ideology, Communism, and linked arms with blood-stained
dictators trying to undermine and discredit democracy, now is pro-democracy. Better late than never!) Said Davis in that interview:
“Those of us who identify as prison abolitionists, as opposed to prison reformers, make the point that oftentimes reforms create
situations where mass incarceration becomes even more entrenched; and so, therefore, we have to think about what in the long run
will produce decarceration, fewer people behind bars, and hopefully, eventually, in the future, the possibility of imagining a
landscape without prisons, where other means are used to address issues of harm , where social problems, such
as illiteracy and poverty, do not lead vast numbers of people along a trajectory that leads to prison.” In Angela Davis’ world,
the Edward Wallaces, the Lester Griffins, the Quanitta Turners and other murderers, rapists, child
molesters, etc., would not have to worry about being punished. After all, it wasn’t really their fault they did
what they did. Rather, it was their presumed “illiteracy and poverty ,” although Wallace was “literate” enough to
write rap lyrics and read tattoos and Ms. Turner had pulled herself up from poverty at least far enough to own a TV — and a remote
control. In “Angela Davis World,” the Wallaces and Griffins and Turners would be free to leave prison. As for the rest of us, we’d
just have to be more careful. And as for former Communist Davis, she pocketed a cool 20 grand via taxpayers and student
activity fees for her hour or so on the KSU stage. Being a capitalist seems to agree with her. It’s highly unlikely that Wallace,
Griffin or Turner have ever heard of Angela Davis, or vice versa, but we’re willing to go out on a limb and
predict those three would be happy to know that Davis has been fighting on their behalf — and using your tax
dollars and a platform provided by KSU in order to do so. Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal - Angie s world Prison abolition
good for killers but the rest of us Not so much
Can’t Solves - States
Plan can’t solve state prisons
Smith 7/2 (Zachary Oren Smith, July 2, 2015, Official: State Prisons 'Hell on Earth' for 40 Years, Jackson Free
Press, http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2015/jul/02/official-state-prisons-hell-earth-40-years/) //JS
Gangs extorting the families of inmates, guards smuggling in drugs, doors "mysteriously" left ajar leading to
assaults on inmates, officers accused of sexually assaulting inmates. No, this list doesn't come from a rehashing of
the plot points from the show, "Orange is the New Black," but from the stories about conditions in Mississippi Department of
Corrections facilities. Those problems coincided with the downfall of the department's commissioner, Chris Epps, who was convicted
on federal corruption charges. Gov. Phil Bryant convened the Task Force on Contracting and Procurement in November 2014 to
examine the prison conditions. Since the five-member commission started meeting, the body has aired concerns about the way the
agency awards contracts and general complaints about the state's prisons. The task force wrapped up public meetings June 26, when
the panel issued a set of recommendations about how the contracting and resource procurement process work. Although the task
force recommended adding oversight of private contractors for MDOC, some members expressed a general discontent
with the task force's limited focus. "Our charge was so narrow," attorney Constance Slaughter-Harvey, one of
the task force's five members, told the Jackson Free Press. "It was more like a reaction to a problem, as opposed to working to create
a model prison system. I have a serious problem with any entity that is managed that way." Slaughter-Harvey says
the poor compensation for MDOC guards contributes to corruption in prisons. "At Parchman, maybe 85 percent or at least 50
percent of the guards were young African American females, (many of which) were single mothers. Their wages were terrible.
For some, it was $10 an hour. It really touched me. This concern and commitment to change the situation made me happy," she said.
Slaughter-Harvey's advocacy for inmate conditions extends back to her time at the University of Mississippi law school in 1972. She
was on a litigation team that won a suit against the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman for the dehumanizing conditions
there. "When I (first) went to Parchman," Slaughter-Harvey said, "they did not have (spit guards) in the dining hall. Feces was not
far from the eating area. The manner in which prisoners were disciplined, working from sun-up to sundown, it was
terrible. If you did not have an effective advocate, you might die because you did not receive any medical care because you
were in the hole. It was really just unimaginable." As a way to curb the financial incentive of guards accepting bribes, the task force
recommended better salaries for the guards. They wrote: "The Task Force believes that corruption at the lowest levels creates a
culture that invites corruption throughout the MDOC system, including the procurement process . ... We
encourage the Legislature to fund the Commissioner's request at a level that will allow him to realign salaries of correctional,
probation and parole officers to a level competitive with other law enforcement agencies." Although the task force's focus was, at its
creation, limited, many like Will Harrell of the American Civil Liberties Union said that the task force's willingness to look at the
broader issues affecting corruption showed the board's greatest impact. "What excites me the most about this work," Harrell said, "is
that they had the courage to identify and call out the elephant in the room, which is, generally speaking, an over-reliance on
incarceration in the state of Mississippi, which is what drove the state to rely on prisons in the first place."
Thinking back to her time spent in Parchman in 1972, and her visit there with the task force, Slaughter-Harvey sees "a quiet
continuation of similar conditions." "Back in '72, people didn't care, and nobody really wanted to deal with the inmates at Parchman
because they were 'wrong,' and they were 'bad,' and they were 'evil,'" she said. "So they gave them hell on Earth. Now, people are
aware that there needs to be a concern, but nobody is willing to do the right thing all the way. The problem is what's not there. It's
what's not seen."
Can’t solve - Halfway House
Can’t solve -- halfway houses
Aldana 3/21 (Ben Aldana, March 21, 2015, Op-ed: Chaffetz’ justice reform won’t stop failure of private
halfway houses, The Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/2307314-155/op-ed-chaffetz-justicereform-wont-stop) //JS
As I walked out the front door of federal prison a little over five years ago, the officer sitting behind the front desk yelled after me,
"Hey, Aldana, we'll keep your bed warm for you!" Given current recidivism rates, I knew he wasn't kidding. It appears Congress is
now working to change the harsh nature of our federal criminal justice system. In mid-2013, I read this and was surprised that a
conservative member of Congress was publicly stating his desire for sensible reform. But after reading Rep. Jason Chaffetz's Public
Safety Enhancement Act of 2013 (HR 2656), I realized the devil was in the details. uring the few months that I lived at the
privately run federal halfway house in Salt Lake City, currently operated by GEO Group, I saw a deeply flawed system.
Newly released female prisoners — many of whom had been traumatized and had fragile self-esteem to start with — were
housed with newly released male prisoners who subjected them to constant, withering abuse. I witnessed staff
members stealing from inmates; "employment specialists" content to shuffle residents into dead-end, short-term jobs;
administrators who consistently made decisions based on profitability, not the interests of the residents and scores of other
problems. Chaffetz's HR 2656 would have done nothing to address the problems present in federal halfway
houses. The "good time credits" outlined in the bill would not have allowed prisoners to be released from custody of the Federal
Bureau of Prisons any earlier, but merely sent to community corrections — which means to halfway houses or home confinement —
sooner than they otherwise would have been and then kept there for longer periods of time. This would have expanded federal
halfway house operations. Since most, if not all, federal halfway houses are run by private contractors, such an
action would have increased the profits of halfway house operators. Before any expansion of federal
halfway house operations is considered, the problems listed in the previous paragraph require attention from Congress.
Prisons Neg - Off Case
DA
Jobs link
Prisons are key to jobs in rural districts – those are key
Sharman 2014 (Samantha, phd in gender studies, destabilizing the prison industrial complex:
necropolitics, biopolitics and the reproduction of sovereignty, university of Arizona,
http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/bitstream/10150/321955/1/azu_etd_mr_2014_0202_sip1_
m.pdf, LB)
Prisons provide jobs. They necessitate and create architects, construction workers, guards, wardens,
nurses, doctors; prison supply companies, prison repair companies; and a plethora of derivative
businesses that are necessary for prisons to exist. Prisons become economic salvations, micro-booms, for the
communities in which they are built (Hallinan, 2001, 85). In New York, from 1972 to 1991, the prison population more than
quintupled from 12,000 to 63,000 (Hallinan, 2001, 83). The mostly white, rural districts which had been abandoned by
traditional industries had benefitted from this expansion. As Joseph Hallinan contends in Going up the River: Travels
in a Prison Nation, “New York’s prison expansion had become a jobs’ program, exporting black inmates from New York City (which
provided 70 percent of the states’ inmates) to white caretakers upstate (2001, 83-4). Private prisons first appeared in 1984
in Tennessee and quickly spread. In 1996, there were 2,600 privately managed prison beds. By 1995, there were over 63,000
(Hallinan, 2001, 144-55). There are over 150 privately owned prisons operating in the U.S. (Hallinan, 2001, xvii). Unlike public
prisons, private prisons price themselves in negotiation with the state—they charge the government for
renting out beds. Private prisons charge on average $30-$60 per bed per night ("Corrections: Prison
Privatization and the Prison Boom”). Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the nation’s largest owner of private prisons, with
67 correctional and detention facilities totaling 92,500 beds (CCA Annual Report, 2013, 5). They are one of the largest prison
operators in the U.S., behind only the federal government and three states. According to their annual report published in
2013, CCA’s revenue exceeded $1.7 billion—all of which came from taxpayers through government
contracts (18-9). In the same report, CCA addresses their share holders’ concern about government
budget cutbacks which might result in a decrease in inmate population. They state they can further develop and
grow their business by: “Maintaining and expanding our existing customer relationships and continuing to fill existing beds
within our facilities, while maintaining an adequate inventory of available beds that we believe provide us
with the flexibility and a competitive advantage when bidding for new management contracts; […] Pursing
additional opportunities; […] Establishing relationships with new customers” (10).
Foucault
1nc
Radical anti-assimilation enables new technologies of surveillance and policing
under the guise of authenticity
Ford 2005 – renowned black legal scholar, prof at Stanford, former Reginald F. Lewis Fellow at Harvard
Law School (Richard Thompson, “Racial Culture”, Princeton University Press, DJ)
¶ The “Repressive Hypothesis” ¶ It’s a familiar story. Ever since the limited but decisive victory of the American civil rights movement,
racism—daunted, but not defeated—has sought a new front from which to attack. Meanwhile, the same
principles that successfully made the bigots of the 1950s eat Jim Crow have been deployed against analogous prejudices—sexism,
homophobia, ageism, the dominance of the able bodied over the differently abled, the tyranny of the thin over the portly. And
so too, these bigotries have retreated only to regroup and fight another day, on another battlefield, with new and as yet
undiscovered weapons of mass discrimination. ¶ We have it on good authority that one of the most potent of these new weapons is
a covert form of discrimination that functions by misdirection. Bigotry will target not natural groups but their
distinctive practices. The law will not countenance discrimination against blacks, but we can stigmatize
Ebonics; one wouldn’t dare discriminate against women, but we can repress feminine styles of social
interaction. The result is a new bigotry—not of types of people but of ways of being. To be clear, the goal of the new bigotry is subtly different than
that of the old bigotry. The goal is not to exclude the previously stigmatized people through the use of proxies; the idea is not, for instance,
to screen out blacks by punishing their speech patterns. Instead, the goal is to transform the previously
stigmatized groups, to remake them in the image of theübermench. The ultimate goal is arguably more
vicious, more comprehensive, than simple exclusion. It is a bloodless extermination—a cultural genocide.¶ This story is
familiar, not only because it has been told so often, but also because it a type of story that has an archetype. The story of the new bigotry is a story of
repression; it is a reiteration of what Michel Foucault in the History of Sexuality , Vol. 1, called a “repressive hypothesis.” The
repressive
hypothesis that Foucault attacked began with the Victorians and involves dark powers of sexuality, while ours begins
with the American bourgeoisie and involves the sexy cultures of the dark skinned. But the parallels are striking. ¶ Foucault argued against
the familiar story in which the institutions of bourgeois society from the Victorian era to the present have operated to re- press the natural and
authentic sexuality of individuals (the “repressive hypothesis”). Instead, Foucault argued, the Victorians were (as we, their legatees, are still today)
obsessed with sexuality: they saw it everywhere, they constantly discussed it, insisted on its relevance and deployed it as a description of many forms of
human behavior. They produced sexuality by defining human behavior in terms of sexuality, defining individuals as sexed in various ways and
cataloguing and constructing sexual typologies. Far from repression, this production of sexuality is, according to Foucault, what defines the modern
attitude toward sex. The
production, (rather than or at least in addition to the repression) of sexuality was a
means of control. It was (and is) a technology that defined the self according to its sexuality, and thereby kept
individuals under a type of sexual surveillance. Further, if anything repressed authentic eroticism (a term whose ontological status is, for
Foucault, questionable at best), it was the incessant production of sexuality that limited the possibilities of erotic expression by imposing upon
individual eroticism a narrow universe of sexual types. ¶ Finally, the idea that sexuality is repressed demands interrogation in its own right. ¶ The
question I would like to pose is not, Why are we repressed? but rather, Why do we say, with so much passion and so much resentment against our most
recent past, against our present, and against ourselves, that we are repressed ?... What led us to show, ostentatiously, that sex is something we
hide...and...do all this by formulating the matter in the most explicit terms, by trying to reveal it in its most naked reality...? [W]e must also ask why we
burden ourselves today with so much guilt for having made sex a sin....How to account for the displacement which, while claiming to free us from the
sinful nature of sex, taxes us with a great historical wrong which consists precisely in imagining that nature to be blameworthy? 20 ¶ Now let’s turn to
culture. The
implicit presumption underlying the “repressive hypothesis” that I described a few pages ago is that group cultural
differences are natural and authentic and that failure to respect these differences is a form of tyranny. Here,
as in Foucault’s “repressive hypothesis” power is exercised through censorship and repression; justice entails nothing more than the absence of
repression; a willingness to let human nature take its course and embrace the mysterious and beautiful forces that already surround and comprise us. ¶
But suppose, with respect to this repressive hypothesis, that something like what Foucault argued for in the context of
sexuality is also true of group cultural difference. Suppose our era is defined, not (or at least not only) by the
repression of group difference, but by its production? Suppose further that the repressive hypothesis is one of the
mechanisms by which this production of group difference is achieved. ¶ There is evidence to support the proposition. We live in a society in
which human beings are sorted (and sort themselves) with remarkable comprehensiveness , precision and efficiency
into a number of almost canonical social groups. You know what they are (and more importantly, you know who you are.) Think about the
neighborhood magazine kiosk, where the grandfather of identity niche marketing Ebony magazine competes for space with Essence (for black women)
Latina, Yolk (Asian-Americans, get it?) and Out (gay and lesbian) magazines. Consider cable television, where Black Entertainment Television
shares the dial with a growing number of identity-oriented lineups, featuring ethnically targeted advertising and ethnic variations on
that stale staple of prime time: the family sit-com (as if barbecue sauce, salsa or kimchi could make that week old Wonder bread go down easier) and
where bold programming entails a gay character who never has a romantic partner or liason but consistently exhibits stereotypically “gay” mannerisms.
Notice the student organizations in colleges (and many high schools), an “alphabet soup” of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation (in law school we
have Black Law Students Association (BLSA), joined by South American and Latino Students Organiz- ation (SALSA), Asian and Pacific Students
Organization (APALSA), and winning the award for both cleverness and for bucking the trend of initials, OUTLAW (“out” gay and lesbian law
students)). And consider
the new, check-every-box-that-applies U.S. Census, where racial data
simultaneously acquires the aura of objective science and the patina of subjective self-affirmation. If there is a
plot to repress group differences, it has numerous and powerful enemies in the media, industry, politics and higher education. ¶ This is more than the
recognition of group identification born as a collective response to social prejudice. It is the production of identity as a lifestyle, a way of being. In the
popular anthropology of group difference there are types of food, music, hairstyles, sports, clothing, television and radio programming, magazines, and
These group specific lifestyles offer an easy
solidarity, a V.I.P. pass to belonging. For socially isolated individuals, social identities offer companionship, distinction, a
sense of purpose, a link to history. Like an arranged marriage, the prefab camaraderie is seductive because it demands acquiescence
rather than deliberation and decision. Social identity promises to be the backdrop of all other social relationships,
something you can rely on and take for granted because it is the precondition of entry into the social,
the sine qua non. ¶ The necessary correlative to this unearned solidarity is an unwarranted presumption about the entailments of group
membership. There is a peculiar variant of political correctness: it regulates not what can be said about a minority group by outsiders, but instead
the behavior of group members. This political correctness requires and duly produces opprobrium for people
intoxicating liquors (or lack of them) appropriate to the various canonical identity groups.
who miss their cue: we encounter “Oreos”—blacks on the outside who don’t “act black” and therefore presumably aren’t black “on the
inside”—and, quickly enough, other racial groups acquire similar figures (for some odd reason all refer to food): Asian “bananas”, Latino “coconuts,”
Native-American “apples.” These
figures of scorn imply that there is a particular type of behavior that is appropriate to a
given race, and thereby censure deviation from it. Thus we hear from Henry Louis Gates Jr. that black college students who frequent
the library are chastised by other black students with the epithet: “incognegro.” Meanwhile their white classmates offer the unwelcome compliment: “I
don’t even think of you as a black person.” Or
notice that the complexities of sexuality and gender identification demand an
ever-expanding list of homosexual types: butch, femme, queen, dyke, lipstick lesbian. Conformity to these recognizable
types is a prerequisite to acceptance in many social circles. These relatively trivial epithets reflect a quite pervasive and potent social
discourse, an orthodoxy as powerful and coer- cive, if not as comprehensive or pervasive, as the social mores of Victorian England. ¶ The fact of intrinsic
racial difference is cited (as a story one already knows) in countless and diverse forms: the racist humor of the blackface minstrel, Steppinfetchit, Amos
n’ Andy, Uncle Remus, Uncle Tom, Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man; but also, in the Moynihan Report on the pathology of black urban culture, the
literature detailing the elements of a distinctive “black learning style” and the popular pseudo-science of the metaphysical properties of melanin. In
contemporary popular culture, racial difference is the dominant figure in a host of “odd couple/buddy” films (the prototype is the now classic Silver
Streak starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, perhaps the most popular are 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop, both starring Eddie Murphy) in which
two protagonists of difference races are forced together by circumstances and overcome treacherous and comic obstacles (at least one of which must
involve racial passing or racial displacement—a white guy in the ghetto or a black guy in a redneck bar) and ultimately, despite their severe cultural
differences, manage to see that people are people after all. ¶ These racial “buddy films” illustrate the Janus-faced nature of contemporary racial
ideology. They
advance a colorblind ideology while simultaneously reinforcing the idea of distinctive
and unassimilable, if not opaque, racial cultures. Issues of racial subordination are generally absent from these films (Silver Streak is a
notable exception)—racism is reduced to one or two “incidents” that are relatively easily and comically overcome—while cultural difference is portrayed
as natural and inevitable: the natural place for Eddie Murphy’s character in Beverly Hills Cop is Detroit, not Beverly Hills, and after gaining the respect
and admiration of the Beverly Hills police force despite his distinctive racial culture, he goes back where he belongs. So the ideal minority is one who
retains his distinctive culture, functions effectively in the main- stream despite it, and, because of his culture, both knows his place and wants to stay
there. ¶ This orthodoxy sends a pernicious message: The status distinctions that divide society (such as distinctions of race, gender, ethnicity and sexual
orientation) are defined (and perhaps justified) by real and profound differences in lifestyle, morality, temperament, norms and aesthetic sensibility.
This message not only provides ready justification for continued bigotry and aversion on the part of those outside the
group in question; perhaps worse yet, it also encourages group members themselves to emphasize their differences from
outsiders, to exaggerate the degree, importance and antiquity of those differ- ences (every trait becomes a cultural
practice, every practice a tradition and every tradition hails from the misty domicile of “time immemorial”) and even to
invent traditions (to borrow Eric Hobsbawm’s evocative phrase21) that never were. (An apt citation here would be the invention of Kwanzaa by black
nationalist Ron Karenga in the late 1960s as an African-American “tradition,” as if the heavily Protestant African-American community needed “our
own” non-Christian Christmas substitute.) ¶ What passes for an objective description of group difference is all-too- often nothing better than a common
stereotype. Moreover, such descriptions of group difference are inevitably exercises of power—attempts to legitimate a particular and controversial
account of group culture over the objection of those who would reject or challenge that account. The
idea that minorities should hew to “their”
as hegemonic as the idea that they should assimilate to a mythical white-bread
mainstream. Therefore, a right-to-cultural-difference will not simply leave people free from repression;
instead, it will install a specific set of ideas about what it means to be a member of whichever group the right
cultural traditions is
“protects.” The normative component of the repressive hypothesis is in an important sense a self-fulfilling prophesy passing as an empirical
observation. (I realize this idea requires a good deal of elaboration; much of this book will be devoted to providing it.) ¶ Like Dr. von Helsing in Bram
discourse is obsessed with a specific evil: the demand for cultural
assimilation. This is an evil that lurks in the dark, unnamed and unknown; it seduces the innocent, attacks the righteous and drains the
Stoker’s Dracula, difference
lifeblood of minority cultures. The
counter strategy has been to expose assimilationism to the daylight by naming it and to
counteract it with it its opposite: recognition of difference. If public celebrations of difference and condemnation of
assimilation are the wolf ’s bane and holy water of multiculturalism, then a legal right-to-difference is a wooden stake. ¶ But this demon—assimilation—
is Janus faced. Assimilation is both compulsory and unavailable. Even as certain formal rules, official proclamations and cultural narratives insist on
the moral necessity of assimilation to a common norm and identity, others reinforce the inevitability and natural character of difference. The nonassimilated minority is to blame for her disadvantage, while the assimilated minority is to be apprehended with suspicion—she is a mutant, warped and
unnatural like a leopard who changed its spots, but also deceptive, like a werewolf in sheep’s attire. ¶ Prescriptively, the repressive hypothesis issues a
clear call for a counter at- tack, or perhaps a preemptive strike: against repression, we need to assert rights to the expression of difference. The more
complicated story I have offered suggests no simple prescription. Rights-to-difference might counter unwarranted social repression, but they also might
feed popular presumptions about group difference, presumptions that I will argue are forms of regulation and control in their own right.
Multiculturalists have been right to argue that pressure to assimilate can be a mechanism of oppression. But they have largely failed to see that the
oppressive machinery that produces assimilationism also contains and relies on its opposite—the discourse of cultural difference—and therefore cannot
effectively be resisted by simple opposition. The
attempt to run from compulsory assimilation toward recognition of
difference delivers us all the more firmly into the grasp of a racism that always includes both .
Gender
1nc
Radical refusal of normative approaches just displaces masculine regulatory
forces onto individual self-regulation—they counterproductively conflate rejection
of masculine norms with the incorrect notion that all norms are masculine
Marjorie Jolles 12, associate professor of women’s and gender studies at Roosevelt University, where she
teaches courses on fashion theory, philosophy of the body, global feminist ethics, and feminist philosophy,
2012, Going Rogue: Postfeminism and the Privilege of Breaking Rules, Feminist FormationsVolume 24,
Number 3, Winter 2012
This conflict between following and violating norms reflects the same tension that this article explores:
postfeminism’s requirement that female subjects both self-invent and self-regulate. If rulefollowing is an effective means for demonstrating the self-regulation required for postfeminist success, how, then, to
make sense of the cultural capital that attaches to the rule-breaker? To answer this question, first we must
understand that one of the ways that the postfeminist’s successful femininity is achieved and supported is
through the subject’s paradoxical relation to cultural norms: relying upon them to perform middle-class
respectability and self-regulation, but self-consciously flouting them to display uniqueness in postfeminism’s
logic that reads defiance as self-invention. Norms themselves are somewhat paradoxical, in that
they simultaneously establish the normal and the deviant, the same and the different . In organizing and
regulating social hierarchies, norms function to make some identities intelligible by making others unintelligible. As social codes and
rules, norms assign varying degrees of moral value to rule-following and rule-breaking behavior, thereby determining the power
available to the subjects who enact it. In perhaps the most vexing aspect of normativity, norms produce
uniformity and encourage conformity, which takes on positive connotations when rule-following is the mark of selfregulation, and negative connotations when self-invention requires the cultivation of a unique, anti-normative individualism. [End
Page 48] The unstable character and shifting value of uniformity generates the play of normativity at the heart of
postfeminism. As a descendant of feminism, post-feminism derives some of its ambivalence toward social norms by
relying on a critique of norms and normalization belonging to a robust feminist tradition . Influential
feminist texts of the twentieth century vehemently and repeatedly call out the oppressive effects of dominant
gender norms, citing the limitations on women’s freedoms enforced by widespread rules of female
behavior instructing women to defer, subordinate themselves, and cultivate a style of passivity in order to support norms of
masculinity that emphasize agency, entitlement, and primary status (Bartky 1990; de Beauvoir 1989). In highlighting the
crucial roles that norms play in the social construction of gender, feminist insights into normalization
risk being interpreted as a condemnation of norms themselves, characterizing
normalization as an inherently oppressive process—a problematic claim, in that it ignores the
enabling and productive nature of some norms to give meaning and shape to identity and experience . (For
example, we obey norms when we communicate in language, and we often experience language as
primarily enabling for meaning-making, not oppressive.) I find that this is one way that postfeminism corrupts
the insights of feminism, taking a critique of certain dangerous norms to conclusions that careful feminist
theorists themselves do not reach: that all norms only and always oppress. Normalization is, in actual
practice, not merely a constraining phenomenon, nor is it simply a process of erasing those attributes that
make an individual unique. The uniformity enabled by norms should not be mistaken as only a
kind of social cloning. As Michel Foucault’s (1997) incisive work on normalization reveals, the constraining power
of norms paradoxically works to support the process of subject-formation, whereby adherence to norms
produces the effect of legible subjective interiority and respectability . In Heyes’s (2007) Foucauldian reading of
normalization’s logics, normalization is “a set of mechanisms for sorting, taxonomizing, measuring, managing, and
controlling populations, which both fosters conformity and generates modes of individuality” (16; emphasis added).
Individuality is therefore not at odds with processes of normalization and social construction ; instead, we
must understand normalization as the very milieu in which individuality is enacted and perceived .
Understanding normalcy and individuality as simultaneous enactments, rather than being mutually
exclusive, explains how one can accomplish postfeminism’s puzzling dual imperatives of self-regulation and self-invention. The
middle class, as a socioeconomic and cultural location as well as an identity, demands conformity to social conventions, while it also
demands individuality and is thus the space where such a feat is possible. Being normal promises respectability, and, as its effect, the
freedom to be oneself.
Wilderson
1nc
Coalitions fail
Spade 2014 (dean, queer politics and antiblackness, http://www.deanspade.net/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/Necropolitics-Collection-Article-Final.pdf, LB)
Third, the widespread call to 'build coalitions' between (non-black) gay people and (straight) black people in the wake of
Proposition 8's passage performed what Wilderson calls a 'crowding out' of black political claims . 'The assessment
that the strategic error in the anti-Proposition 8 campaign was a lack of black voter education and mobilization misunderstands the
relationship between non-black gay and lesbian politics and black politics. Dominant gay and lesbian politics over the
past three decades have either explicitly or tacitly supported nearly every site of black abjection and
abandonment - namely, privatization, militarization, and criminalization. In particular, gay and lesbian
politics' unwillingness to oppose policing and prison expansion has been a key faultline demonstrating its
dissonance with the demands of black politics. \!Vhen black people's lives and deaths are centred in
analysing barriers to reproduction, the centrality of marriage quickly dissipates to reveal civil society
itself- including but not limited to police, prisons, courts, schools, social services, foster care, child protective services, public
benefits and more- as sites of what Dylan Rodriguez describes as the mass-based immobilization and routinized terror of black
people, determining the life chances of current and future black generations (Rodriguez 2006). From this view we can understand
that it is not merely a coincidence that gay and lesbian rights politics has, in many ways, championed the
existence (including the reform) of the US prison regime. We can see this only most explicitly in two decades of hate
crimes legislation lobbying, police training, increased police presence in 'gayborhoods' (Hanhardt 2008: 6185), and enmeshment with criminal legal victim advocacy frameworks, as well as the silent support for endless prison construction,
law enforcement-immigration collaboration, and police militarization. The prison regime - the decentralized complex of
institutions and practices that permeates all of civil society and works to liquidate black life - is a key way
that slavery has been re-inscribed after its purported 'abolition'. How non-black social movements relate to this
regime, then, is an important illustration of the 'contradictions of coalitions between workers and slaves' (Wilderson 2007), the
diverging demands, claims, and strategies among those meant to work and those meant to die. Most nonblack social movements and particularly white social movements have invariably bolstered, normalized
and extended this regime, either explicitly or by challenging only its 'excesses' instead of its fundamental
existence.
Focus on race is uniquely key
Spade 2014 (dean, queer politics and antiblackness, http://www.deanspade.net/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/Necropolitics-Collection-Article-Final.pdf, LB)
The poster in Figure 9.1 -from a protest following the passage of California's Proposition 8 same-sex marriage
ban, which we will come back to throughout this chapter - illustrates one way in which this contradiction
plays out within LGBT politics. 1 Notice two things: first, that the poster lists simply 'African-American' in its todo list- instead of; perhaps, 'African American Rights' -and second, that there is a check mark beside it,
sig11alling its completion. VVhat was perhaps an oversight by its author points to the widespread notion that black people
having rights is both redundant (already done) and oxymoronic (impossible). In effect, black people are the paradigmatically
progressed population and at the same time incapable of advancing on the path of progress. Gay rights (which apparently have no
overlap with either women's rights or 'African Americans'), on the other hand, are both possible and unfinished. And so
the proclamation resounds: 'Gay is the New Black!'2 VVildcrson invites us to understand anti-blacJmess as the
precondition for this contradiction: [C]oalitions and social movements- even radical social movements
such as the prison abolition movement, bound up in the solicitation of hegemony so as to forti£)-~ and extend the
interlocutory life of civil society - ultimately accommodate only the satiable demands and finite
antagonisms of civil society's junior partners (i.e. immigrants, white women, and the working class), but fOreclose on
the insatiable demands and endless antagonisms of the prison slave and the prison slave-in-waiting.
(Wildcrson 2007: 23) The 'supplemental anti-blackness' of the United States' junior partners'- those whose grievances might be
redressed, however incompletely, by 'rights', to which we might add non-black LGBTQ people - functions hand in hand with the
systematic state and para-state violence targeted at black people. 'fhe tactics of 'crowding out' black claims (like we see in the poster)
and the tactics of actively ten-orizing black people are two wings of the same endeavour. Because 'blackness' and
'criminality' arc wedded in the US lexicon, as Saidiya Hartman argues in h~r book Scenes ofSubject£on (Hartman 1997),
any claims to not being a criminal- or on the flipside, to being a citizen-.. must literally be made on the
backs of black people. VVhen rights-seeking constituencies claim they are 'not criminals', they articulate their bid for inclusion
through an implicit assertion that they are 'not black'. Even if the articulation is made on behalf of a group that
supposedly does not exclude black members, as Sexton and VVilderson argue, such an assertion enters a
system of meaning that necessarily signifies the group as non-black and appeals for a chance to
participate in anti-blackness.
Coalitions obscure underlying anti-blackness
Wilderson 2002 (frank b III, shot racists in south Africa, the prison slaves as hegemony’s silent
scandal, http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Wilderson%20paper.pdf, LB)
Any serious musing on the question of antagonistic identity formation a formation, the mass mobilization of
which can precipitate a crisis in the institutions and assumptive logic which under gird the United State of
America -- must come to grips with the contradictions between the radical social movements (like the
large prison abolition movements) political demands i.e. the abolition of the prison industrial complex
and the ideological structure which underwrites its political desire . I contend that (1) the positionality of Black
subjectivity is at the heart of those contradictions and (2) this unspoken desire is bound up with the
political limitations of several naturalized and uncritically accepted categories which have their genesis mainly in
the works of Antonio G ramsci: namely, work or labor, t he wage, exploitation, hegemony, and civil society. I want
to theorize the symptoms of rage and resignation I hear in the words of George Jackson, when he boils
reform down to a single word, fascism; in Assatas brief declaration i hated it; and in the Manichean delirium of Fanon,
Martinot and Sexton because, today, the failure of radical social movements to embrace symptoms of all three
gestures is tantamount to the reproduction of an anti-Black politics which nonetheless represents itself as
being in service to the emancipation of the Black prison slave. By examining the strategy and structure of the Black
subject's absence in, and incommensurability with, the key categories of Gramscian theory, we come face to face with three
unsettling consequences: (1) The Black American subject imposes a radical incoherence upon the
assumptive logic of Grammscian discourse and up on todays coalition politics. In other words, s/he
implies a scandal. (2) The Black subject reveals the inability of Gramscian discourse and social
movements to think white supremacy (rather than capitalism) as the base and thereby calls into question their claim to
elaborate a comprehensive and decisive antagonism. Stated another way: Gramscian discourse and coalition politics are
indeed able to imagine the subject which transforms itself into a mass of antagonistic identity formations,
formations which can precipitate a crisis in wage slavery, exploitation, and hegemony, but they are asleep
at the wheel when asked to provide enabling antagonisms toward unwaged slavery, despotism, and terror.
(3) We begin to see how Marxism suffers from a kind of conceptual anxiety: a desire for socialism on the other
side of crisis -- a society which does away not with the category of worker, but with the imposition workers
suffer under the approach of variable capital: in other words the mark of its conceptual anxiety is in its desire to
democratize work and thus help keep in place, insure the coherence of, Reformation and Enlightenment foundational
values of productivity and progress. This is a crowding out scenario for other post-revolutionary
possibilities, for instance idleness.
Child Molester PIC
1nc
Plan: the United States federal government should abolish its domestic prisons
except for the incarceration of child molesters.
Imprisonment solves – incapacitates offenders
Wrobleski and Hess 9 -- Information Technology Administrative Services Coordinator and PhD in
medicine, MD (Henry and Karen, “Introduction to Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice,” 9th edition, p.
520, tony)
Incapacitation refers to making it impossible for offenders to commit further offenses. Incapacitation can
take many forms. One of the earliest forms was banishmnent, also referred to as social death. Some
people feel this is the ultimate punishment, more devastating than being executed. In preliterate societies,
offenders were often cast out of the village. Most recently England banished its outlaws and undesirables
to Australia and then to the United States. Other forms of incapacitation make it physically impossible for
a criminal act to be repeated. A thief whose hands are cut off will not easily steal again. A castrated male
will be unable to rape again. An incarcerated child molester will not be able to abuse children while in
prison. And, obviously, a murderer who is executed will kill no more. Currently, the most common
method of incapacitation is incarceration. While imprisoned a criminal is no longer a threat to
society. The most extreme for of incapacitation is capital punishment.
We have a moral obligation to protect children
Parisi 10 – Wisconsin State Representative (Joe, “Child Victims Act Provides Opportunity for Justice, Healing, and
Accountability”
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/asm48/news/Informational%20Columns/2.22.10%20Child%20Victims%20Act.pdf, 2-2210, tony)
One of the most important roles of government is to protect people who are vulnerable to abuse and
mistreatment. For many reasons, children are quite susceptible to sexual, physical, and emotional abuse,
especially at the hands of adults who are in a position of trust or authority. As an elected official, I believe
that I have a duty to both protect children who have already been abused and do everything in my power
to prevent more children from being abused. This is why I have authored the “Child Victims Act (CVA),”
which gives victims of childhood sexual assault the opportunity to hold perpetrators accountable in court
and will help prevent the further sexual victimization of children.
domestic cp
1nc
We advocate abolition of domestic indefinite detention, and the cessation of
hostilities in the United States’ war on terrorism.
The aff collapses the laws of armed conflict – cp avoids it
Bialke 4 -- MA & JD-University of North Dakota, LLM-University of Iowa, (Lt. Colonel, Al-Qaeda &
Taliban Unlawful Combatant Detainees, Unlawful Belligerency, and the International Laws of Armed
Conflict,” 55 A.F. L. Rev. 1, tony)
International Obligations & Responsibilities and the International Rule of Law
The United States (U.S.) is currently detaining several hundred al-Qaeda and Taliban unlawful enemy combatants from more than
40 countries at a multi-million dollar maximum-security detention facility at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These
enemy detainees were captured while engaged in hostilities against the U.S. and its allies during the post-September 11, 2001
international armed conflict centered primarily in Afghanistan. The conflict now involves an ongoing concerted international
campaign in collective self-defense against a common stateless enemy dispersed throughout the world. Domestic and international
human rights organizations and other groups have criticized the U.S., n1 arguing that al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees in Cuba
should be granted Geneva Convention III prisoner of war (POW) n2 status. They contend broadly that pursuant to the
international laws of armed conflict (LOAC), combatants captured during armed conflict must be treated equally
and conferred POW status. However, no such blanket obligation exists in international law. There is no
legal or moral equivalence in LOAC between lawful combatants and unlawful combatants , or between lawful
belligerency [*2] and unlawful belligerency (also referred to as lawful combatantry and unlawful combatantry). The U.S. has
applied well-established existing international law in holding that the al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees
are presumptively unlawful combatants not entitled to POW status. n3 Taliban and al-Qaeda enemy combatants
captured without military uniforms in armed conflict are not presumptively entitled to, nor automatically granted, POW status.
POW status is a privileged status given by a capturing party as an international obligation to a captured enemy combatant, if and
when the enemy's previous lawful actions in armed conflict demonstrate that POW status is merited. In the case of captured alQaeda and Taliban combatants, their combined unlawful actions in armed conflict, and al-Qaeda's failure to adequately align with a
state show POW status is not warranted. The role of the U.S. in the international community is unique. The U.S., although relatively
a young state, is the world's oldest continuing democracy and constitutional form of government. The U.S. is a permanent member
of the United Nations Security Council, the world's leading economic power, and its only military superpower. The U.S. is the only
country in the world capable of commencing and supporting effectively substantial international military operations with an
extensive series of military alliances, and the required numbers of mission-ready expeditionary forces consisting of combat
airpower, land and naval forces, intelligence, special operations, airlift, sealift, and logistics. Great influence and capabilities,
however, exact great responsibility. As a result of its unique role and influence within the international community, the U.S. has
been placed at the forefront of respecting LOAC and promoting international respect for LOAC. The U.S.
military has the largest, most sophisticated and comprehensive LOAC program in the world. The U.S.
demonstrates respect for LOAC by devoting an extraordinary and unequalled level of resources to the
development and enforcement of these laws, through an unparalleled LOAC training and education
regimen for U.S. and allied [*3] military members, and a conscientious and consistent requirement
that its forces comply with these laws in all military operations. Customary LOAC binds every
country in the world including the U.S. International collective security and U.S. national
security may be achieved only through a steadfast commitment to the Rule of Law. For the
U.S. to grant POW status to captured members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban would be an abdication of
these international legal responsibilities and obligations. It would set a dangerous precedent
contrary to the Rule of Law and LOAC, and to the highest purpose of the laws of warfare, the
protection of civilians during armed conflict. This article begins by explaining how LOAC protects civilians
through the enforcement of clear distinctions between lawful combatants, unlawful
combatants, and protected noncombatants. It summarizes the four conditions of lawful belligerency under
customary and treaty-based LOAC, and instructs why combatants who do not meet these conditions do not possess combatant's
privilege; that is, the immunity provided to members of the armed forces for acts in armed conflict that would otherwise be crimes in
time of peace. The article then reviews why LOAC does not require that captured unlawful combatants be afforded POW status, and
addresses specifically captured al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. The practices and behavior of these fighters en masse in
combat deny them privileges as lawful belligerents entitled to combatant's privilege. The article argues that alQaeda unlawful combatants are most appropriately described as hostes humani generis, "the common enemies of humankind." The
article subsequently explains why al-Qaeda members, as hostes humani generis, are classic unlawful combatants, as part of a
stateless organization that en masse engaged in combat unlawfully in an international armed conflict without any legitimate state or
other authority. The article explicates al-Qaeda's theocratic-political hegemonic objectives and its use of global terrorism to further
those objectives. The article expounds as to why international law deems a transnational act of private warfare by al-Qaeda as
malum in se, "a wrong in itself." Related to al-Qaeda's status as hostes humani generis, the article describes one of the Taliban's
many violations of international law; that is, willfully allowing al-Qaeda hostes humani generis to reside within Afghanistan's
sovereign borders from where al-Qaeda could and did attack unlawfully other sovereign states. The article then details a state's
inherent rights if and when attacked by such hostes humani generis. Following this, the article continues by asserting that there is
no doubt or ambiguity as to the unlawful combatant status of the Taliban and al-Qaeda (shown by the failure of
the Taliban en masse to meet the four fundamental criteria of lawful belligerency, al-Qaeda's statelessness en masse, and both their
many acts of unlawful belligerency and violations of LOAC). As a result, the article states that there is no need or
requirement for proceedings under [*4] Geneva Convention III, art. 5 to adjudicate their presumptive
unlawful combatant status and non-entitlement to POW status pro forma. The article subsequently
illustrates that, even though captured al-Qaeda and Taliban are unlawful combatants and not POWs, the U.S. as a matter of
policy has treated and continues to treat all al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees humanely in accordance with
customary international law, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity and in a manner
consistent with the principles and spirit of the Geneva Conventions. The article discusses that, under LOAC, the detainees
are captured unlawful combatants that can be interned without criminal charges or access to
legal counsel until the cessation of hostilities. However, the article then points out that the U.S. has no desire to,
and will not, hold any unlawful combatant indefinitely. The article then notes that al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees, as unlawful
combatants, are subject to trial by U.S. military commissions for their acts of unlawful belligerency or other violations of LOAC and
international humanitarian law. It expounds that, when an opposing force detains an unlawful combatant in time of armed conflict,
the unlawful combatant's right to legal counsel or other representation only arises if criminal charges are brought against the
unlawful combatant. The article illustrates the security measures, evidence procedures, and the many executive due process
protections afforded to detainees subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. military commissions. The article states that; if tried and
convicted in a U.S. military commission, a detainee may be required to serve the adjudged sentence, such as punitive confinement.
The article concludes that it is in the immediate and long-term national security interests of the U.S. to
respect and uphold LOAC in all military operations. Ultimately, the United States has an
obligation to the international community and the Rule of Law not to afford POW status to captured
unlawful combatants such as the al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees in furtherance of both domestic and
international security.
That risks nuclear war – wmd compliance and international regs
Delahunty 10 -- associate prof @ U St. Thomas Law and Yoo law prof @ UC Berkeley (Robert and John,
59 DePaul L. Rev. 803, tony)
Finally, the extension of IHRL to armed conflict may have significant consequences for the success
of international law in advancing global welfare. Rules of the LOAC represent the delicate balancing
between the imperatives of combat and the humanitarian goals in wartime. The LOAC has been
remarkably successful in achieving compliance from warring nations in obeying these rules.
This is most likely due to the reciprocal nature of the obligations involved. Nations treat prisoners of war
well in order to guarantee that their own captive soldiers will be treated well by the enemy; nations will
refrain from using weapons of mass destruction because they are deterred by their enemy's possession of
the same weapons. It has been one of the triumphs of international law to increase the restrictions
on the use of unnecessarily destructive and cruel weapons, and to advance the norms of
distinction and the humane treatment of combatants and civilians in wartime. IHRL norms, on the other
hand, may suffer from much lower rates of compliance. This may be due, in part, to the non-reciprocal
nature of the obligations. One nation's refusal to observe freedom of speech, for example, will not cause
another country to respond by depriving its own citizens of their rights. If IHRL norms--which were
developed without much, if any, consideration of the imperatives of combat--merge into the LOAC, it will
be likely that compliance with international law will decline. If nations must balance their security
[*849] needs against ever more restrictive and out-of-place international rules supplied by IHRL, we
hazard to guess that the latter will give way. Rather than attempt to superimpose rules for peacetime
civilian affairs on the unique circumstances of the "war on terror," a better strategy for encouraging
compliance with international law would be to adapt the legal system already specifically designed for
armed conflict.
Multiplank CP
1NC
Text: The United States federal government should implement strategic
decarceration.
Strategic decarceration solves
Shaylor and Chandler 05 (Cassandra Shaylor -- the co-founder and former co-director of Justice Now and a co-founder
of Critical Resistance, and Cynthia Chandler -- Co-Founder and Executive Director of Justice Now, ad junct professor at Golden Gate
University School of Law, 2005, Public Eye - Defending Justice, Reform and Abolition: Points of Tension and Connection,
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/organizing/shaylor_reform.html) //JS
We can simultaneously address the needs of people who are suffering in the system currently and challenge the
efforts by the Right to co-opt our attempts to change the system by carefully crafting reform strategies that are about
diminishing the power of the system and building alternatives to it. For instance, a focus on strategic decarceration is a
significant step toward the ultimate abolition of the prison . Such campaigns focus on: implementing a
moratorium on prison construction; closing existing prisons; changing laws and sentencing structures
that imprison the greatest numbers of people (such as drug laws, three strikes schemes, property offenses,
anti-sex work ordinances, etc); and creating community-based institutions that provide services that
people need. When implementing such strategies, however, it is important to build them on rhetorical approaches that do not
play into the hands of the Right. An example, which often occurs in relation to death penalty and immigrant rights work, is the
pitting of non-violent prisoners (those who "deserve" to be released) against violent prisoners (those who do not) or "innocent"
prisoners against "guilty" prisoners. Though the number of people who are in prison for violent offenses is extremely small, the first
question posed to prison abolitionists is the question of how to respond to harms that people inflict. In response, strategies for
creating systems of accountability instead of punishment when someone is harmed can be developed without relying on policing and
prison. While the antiprison movement has historically challenged racist policing and imprisonment practices, few strategies have
been developed for alternative mechanisms of safety and justice. As a result, the anti-violence movement has struggled to respond to
interpersonal violence in an era when policing and prisons are often the only available response. Moreover, through a desire to have
the State acknowledge the vulnerability of marginalized groups, anti-violence activists often push for increased criminalization, such
as hate crimes legislation, as a response to discrimination. Through these practices, activists interested in protecting vulnerable
groups can unintentionally bolster the same systems of oppression and State violence that most often target the groups they are
seeking to protect. There is a need to break down barriers between and within the anti-prison and anti-violence movements, to
expand the definition of violence to include State sanctioned violence such as imprisonment, and to create tangible alternatives for
establishing true safety and justice. The perceived lack of creative responses to violence has been seized upon by the Right to
increase the level of fear about violent crime and present prison as the only response. We know that the numbers of women who are
survivors of domestic violence or rape, for instance, have not decreased despite the growing number of people in prison. Therefore,
strategies for creating accountability locally and in communities will go a long way to countering the notion that
we have no choice but to lock people up. Many of these strategies are in place on a local level and can serve as models
for organizers who are developing alternatives to policing and prisons. For instance, Communities Against
Rape and Abuse in Seattle develops innovative responses to sexual assault that do not rely on the police;
Sista Sista in Brooklyn organizes young women to challenge police abuse through direct action, and
Generation Five in San Francisco trains community members to implement responses to child sexual
abuse that do not rely on child protective services or the prison system.11 We also can implement changes to language that both
ensure that we are not undermining a longer term goal of abolition and reclaim language that has been appropriated by the Right.
For instance, we can avoid using language that pits categories of prisoners against each other (innocent vs. guilty, non-violent vs.
violent) and we can also reclaim rhetoric that has been used by the Right to grow the system (prisons don't make
communities safe but affordable housing, healthcare, food and education do).
2NC - Solves the Aff
Decarceration solves -- Davis
FT 12 (Pittsburg Feminist Theory, February 23, 2012, Decarceration or Reform? How to Best Overcome
Troubling Issues within the United States Prison System,
https://pittfemtheorys12.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/decarceration-or-reform-how-to-best-overcome-troublingissues-within-the-united-states-prison-system/) //JS
The title of Angela Y. Davis’ book poses the question, “Are Prisons Obsolete?” Davis points out many of the most glaring failures
of the prison industrial complex, supporting an answer of ‘yes’ to her book’s title. She argues in favor of “abolitionist” (Davis,
105) alternatives to incarceration, which focus on “decarceration as our overarching strategy” (Davis, 107). These decarceration
strategies include “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” (Davis, 107). Davis’ critique of the prison industrial complex is well taken. The
number of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons has risen from 200,000 during the 1960’s, to over two million currently in prison
facilities today (Davis, 11). The United States houses 22.2% of the world’s criminal population in its prisons (two million out of nine
million total) (Davis, 10). Racial disparities within prison populations are also troubling. As Davis states “Today African-Americans
and Latinos are vastly overrepresented in these supermax prisons and control units” (Davis, 49). Davis even goes so far as to
compare current imprisonment practices, and the racial disparities they demonstrate, to a modern form of state-sanctioned slavery
(Davis, Chapter 2). In addition to state-sanctioned slavery, Davis argues that sexual assault against female prisons is also alarmingly
common. She describes reports of sexual violence, rape, sodomy, and cohered sexual favors by female prisons, perpetrated by prison
guards (Davis, 78-79). Davis also likens the use of cavity and strip searches to sate-sanctioned sexual assault (Davis, 63). Davis
spends an extensive amount of text describing data, testimony, and theory that supports the existence of these problems within the
United States prison system. Her proposed solution, the decarceration mentioned earlier, is described aptly in the following
quote: “To reiterate, rather than try to imagine one single alternative to the existing system of incarceration, we might envision an
array of alternatives that will require radical transformations of many aspects of our society” (Davis, 108) This ‘array’ of alternatives
includes the educational, medical, and judicial reform addressed above. I support Davis’ ‘get to the root of the problem’ approach.
However, I question how this might be achieved to such an extent that our society will be able to eliminate prisons entirely. Davis
apparently anticipated just this type of counterargument. In the very first pages of her book, she observes: “In most circles prison
abolition is simply unthinkable and implausible. Prison abolitionists are dismissed as utopians and idealists whose ideas are at best
unrealistic and impracticable, and, at worst, mystifying and foolish.” (Davis, 9-10) I do not think Davis is unrealistic or foolish. I do,
however, question how the reforms her argument depends on might come about. And, even if those reforms are achieved, I still do
not agree that prisons could be completely eliminated. It makes sense that by reforming the education and health
systems, we would thereby decrease the number of criminals who turn to crime due to low education
levels or base needs (like food or medical care).
PIC PIC
1nc
The affirmative conflates the prison industrial complex with economic profits –
this is a false analysis of history
Wacquant 2009 (loic, the prison is an outlaw institution,
http://www.loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/PRISONOUTLAWINSTITUTION-Expanded.pdf, LB)
In 1662, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the minister of finance of Louis XIV, sent a letter to the parlements [the principal judicial bodies
under the ancien régime] that read: „His Majesty, desirous of replenishing the crews of his galleys and strengthening them by all
possible means, wishes you to assist by having your judges procure the condemnation of as many guilty as possible, and in addition
convert the death sentence to one of galley servitude‟.11 Power thus used convicts as a free labour force. In Discipline
and Punish, Michel Foucault argued likewise that prison serves economic power even more than the galleys did.
Have we now reverted to this configuration? 12 Not in the sense that the economic exploitation of
prisoners would be the cause of or reason for the spectacular increase of incarceration in the United States
and, to a lesser extent, in western Europe. This configuration obtained at the historical origin of the penal prison: in the
sixteenth century, the Bridewell in London, the Zuchthaus in Amsterdam and the hôpital général in Paris fulfilled three indivsible
functions: to confine, to reform and to put to work. In their classic work Punishment and Social Structure, Georg Rusche and Otto
Kirchheimer showed that, at that time, the aim of imprisonment was to „render the labour power of unwilling
people socially useful‟ by inculcating them under duress industrious habits so that they would
„voluntarily go swell the ranks of those seeking to labour‟ when released. 13 But this was no longer true by the end
of the eighteenth century, the period that interested Foucault, and the very opposite applies at the end of the twentieth century:
today‟s prisons primarily warehouse the rejects of the labour market, the deproletarianised and supernumerary fractions of the
working class, rather than a reserve army of labour. In America, barely one prisoner in eight has a „job‟ (by the most generous
definition of employment, that is, counting doing chores inside custodial facilities) and the ratios are even lower on this side of the
Atlantic. Putting convicts to work is not a practical proposition in contemporary society, for a host of legal
and economic reasons. Contrary to the claims of the critics of the so-called „prison-industrial complex‟,
incarceration is not a profitable „industry‟ for society because its costs are astronomical ($25,000 per inmate
per year in a California state penitentiary and $70,000 in New York county jail) and it generates no wealth. It is a gross
drain on the public coffers that is profoundly irrational from a capitalistic standpoint. The private
operators that benefit from the prison boom are minor players who exploit the bureaucratic rigidities of
the state downstream, not strategic actors that impact penal policy upstream. Searching for a direct
link between incarceration and economic profit takes you nowhere. That does not mean that
hyperincarceration does not serve an indirect economic function: it disciplines the most reticent elements of the new service
proletariat by raising the cost of resistance strategies and of the flight into the informal, illicit street economy. But above all, we must
not think the advent of „liberal paternalism‟ through the categories of exploitation and repression. We should construe it, as Michel
Foucault suggested in his celebrated analysis of the invention of sexuality,14 through the category of production. The transition from
the welfare state to the penal state is eminently productive: it produces new categories such as the „sensitive neighbourhoods‟
containing the „problem populations‟ prone to those dreaded forms of „urban violence‟, or the imbecilic slogan of „zero tolerance‟
which some would want to apply today in every realm where discredited hierarchies must be reaffirmed (the street, the school, the
family, the firm). It produces new discourses, such as the trope of „security‟ that the gauche plurielle [the left-wing coalition
government in France in 1997-2002] keeps harping on about, understood narrowly as referring to the physical security of goods and
persons, decisively severed from its social and economic foundations – which, in a paradoxical reversal, presents the police and
penal stewardship of working-class districts as a progressive move that would benefit their inhabitants. Finally, it produces novel
institutions and novel agents, such as the „security consultancies‟ and „security associates‟ (the creation of 16,000 jobs for young
people to improve the „policing‟ of the peripheral urban zones undermined by unemployment and flexible employment), and new
judicial measures (fast-track prosecution, variants of plea bargaining) which, under the pretext of bureaucratic efficiency, install a
differential form of justice based on ethnic and class origins. In short, the penalisation of precariousnes creates new „realities‟, and
realities tailormade to legitimise the ascent of the punitive state according to the principle of the “selffulfilling prophecy.” 15 One
illustration: by transforming the slightest incident of misconduct at school into an act of juvenile
delinquency that systematically triggers a court referral, one artificially manufactures an epidemic of
„classroom violence‟ which, with the help of the media, can in turn be used to justify the „partnership‟
between schools and the police that produced it in the first place, and therefore normalize the creeping
daily intrusion of the latter into the former.
Vote negative to endorse the 1ac absent the term prison industrial complex
Global sociology 2010 (debunking the myth of the prison industrial complex,
http://globalsociology.com/2010/03/22/debunking-the-myth-of-the-prison-industrial-complex/, LB)
For Wacquant, there are four main reasons the expression “prison-industrial complex” does not provide an
accurate explanatory frame: 1. It focuses exclusively on the “prisonfare” part of the dual approach that the
neoliberal state uses against “problem populations”, completely missing the “workfare” part of the
disciplining of such populations and the necessary counterpart to mass incarceration. 2. The idea of prisonindustrial complex emphasizes privatization and the rise of the private prison sector with corporations such
CCA or Wackenhut. In other words, the logic of such privatization is profits, along with the use of inmates
by other corporations, such as Microsoft. But imprisonment, in the US and other countries, is still mostly
a public affair. Privatization is not a necessary condition of mass incarceration but a side effect of it. As
Wacquant notes, “banning adult imprisonment for profit did not prevent California from becoming a leader in the drive to mass
incarceration” (85). Similarly, the exploitation of inmates by corporation affects only about 1% of inmates. 3. The expression
“prison-industrial complex” is, of course, reminiscent of another industrial complex: the militaryindustrial complex. This is not random, but for Wacquant, this parallel obscures major differences. The American
military is highly centralized whereas the whole incarceration system is more of a capillary nature (to use
Foucault’s expression). The US penal system is widely dispersed and decentralized, and therefore less subject to uniform policy. 4.
The framing of prison-industrial complex also tends to hide from view the major transformations that have taken place regarding
prisons and the oversight that courts have exercises, sometimes forcefully regarding the issue of overcrowding, for instance. It also
obscures the work of the prison reform movement to introduce, albeit in a limited fashion, a welfarist
logic to the carceral world. In other words, when I mentioned that Wacquant debunks the idea of a prisonindustrial complex, I did not mean that he denies the existence of mass incarceration, but rather that he
finds the framing misguided as explanatory construct.
Reform CP
1NC
The United States federal government should
- Pass the Private Prison Information Act
- Implement (some sort of reform)
1st plank boost private prison transparency
HRDC 12 (Human Rights Defense Center - a coalition of over 30 not-for-profit criminal
justice and public interest organizations, December 19, 2012, Private Prison Information
Act of 2013, http://privateprisoninformationactof2013.blogspot.com/) //JS
The Private Prison Information Act (PPIA) would require for-profit prison companies that contract with the federal
government to comply with public records requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the same
extent as federal agencies. Currently, FOIA does not apply to private companies that contract with the federal
government. We are deeply troubled by the secrecy with which the private corrections industry presently operates. Whereas the
Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and state departments of corrections are subject to disclosure statutes under the Freedom of
Information Act and state-level public records laws, private prison firms that contract with public agencies generally are not,” the
joint letter submitted to Rep. Jackson Lee noted. “This lack of public transparency is indefensible in light of the nearly $8
billion in federal contracts that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group (GEO) – the nation’s two largest
private prisons firms – have been awarded since 2007.” In fact, according to the U.S. Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Electronic Filing
System, CCA has lobbied against the PPIA when it was introduced in previous Congressional sessions. Other allies of the private
prison industry, including the Reason Foundation – which receives funding from CCA and GEO – have also opposed extending
FOIA to private prison contractors. Both CCA and the GEO Group receive over 40 percent of their revenue from federal contracts,
which “makes them the perfect candidates for FOIA compliance” because “The private prison industry is fundamentally different in
that no citizen can freely purchase incarceration services as a private individual. There is no natural market for incarceration
services; the entire market would cease to exist without direct government intervention in the form of taxpayer-funded contracts to
operate correctional facilities.” The joint letter submitted to Rep. Jackson Lee was a cooperative project between UC Berkeley
doctoral student Christopher Petrella and the Human Rights Defense Center. Signatories include the ACLU, Florida
Justice Institute, In the Public Interest, Justice Policy Institute, National CURE, Prison Policy Initiative,
Southern Center for Human Rights, Southern Poverty Law Center, Texas Civil Rights Project, Enlace and
YouthBuild USA. The private prison industry operates in secrecy while being funded almost entirely with
public taxpayer money,” noted Human Rights Defense Center associate director Alex Friedmann, who testified in support of
the PPIA before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security in June 2008. “The public has a
right to know how its money is being spent, and transparency and accountability demand that private prison corporations
answer to the public by being subject to FOIA requests to the same extent as federal agencies. If they have nothing to hide from the
public, they should not object – but they do, which speaks volumes.” Obligating private prison companies to comply with FOIA
requirements applies a single standard for transparency in corrections reporting regardless of agency type,” added Christopher
Petrella. “And because efforts to privatize federal detention facilities are on the rise – populations held in privately-operated facilities
have grown by nearly 20 percent over the past year – the time is right to demand meaningful accountability in the private
corrections industry.”
Reforms Solve
Chura 14 (David Chura -- the author of I Don't Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales
of Kids in Adult Lockup, September 04, 2014, Huffington Post - Politics, Why Prison
Reform Is Good for All of Us, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-chura/why-prisonreform-is-good_b_5759702.html) //JS
Given our present prison system with its emphasis on punishment and retribution, everybody suffers. Inmates, correctional officers,
victims, the average citizen and taxpayer. Prisons are violent, toxic places. They are often overcrowded and smelly with the soup of
open toilets, the effluence of crammed together bodies under stress with little or no physical or personal space. The noise is
deafening. TVs blare (in English and Spanish); metal gates clang; the overused PA system squawks, and inmates and correctional
staff shout over it all trying to be heard. There's no trust in a prison, no safety, just the constant threat of violence, intimidation, the
need to never let your guard down, to "give as good as you get." If an inmate wants to survive in prison that's the way he or she must
act. If they can't, they find themselves in protective custody which translates as months of numbing isolation in solitary confinement.
When you look at these conditions honestly, without the filter of righteousness --"that's what they get for breaking the law" -- how
could you not see that the present system (the very thing people insist will deter crime) only breeds anger and
resentment, hostility and hopelessness in offenders, and finally leads to more crime? And more crime means that victims are not
only not served by the system but are further threatened by it, and that their suffering reverberates into their families and
communities. More crime means that other citizens become victims until nobody feels safe, and the whole cycle starts all over again.
A simple statistic: Kids handled in the adult system are 34 percent more likely to re-offend and their behavior to more quickly
escalate into violence than those young people who remain in the juvenile system. But there are other "victims" of the prison system
and its harsh, dangerous, and degrading environment. Correctional officers operate under the same conditions as those locked up,
many times for up to 16 hours a day as they choose or are pressed into working overtime. That point came home to me at the end of
one school year. As temperatures soared, the heat in the hallways and cell blocks of the older buildings of the prison where I taught
(luckily with an air conditioner supplied by the school program) was insufferable. Huge floor fans only moved the suffocating air
around, offering no relief, and only adding to the noise. That's when it first hit me that the COs I interacted with every day were as
trapped in the same punishing conditions as the young offenders I worked with. But it goes beyond the everyday level of physical
discomfort for COs. The need to be hyper-vigilant, the defensive stance engendered by the institutionalized hostility of the prison
power structure -- "us" and "them"; the keepers and the kept -- takes its toll not only on COs, but also on their families. Studies have
shown that 31 percent of correctional officers meet "the criteria for full PTSD" (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder); that the average life
expectancy is 58 years old, and that correctional officers have a 39 percent higher suicide rate than any other occupation. Even those
of us who are not personally caught in the web of incarceration are affected by the prison system. Our tax money is spent
building and maintaining these institutions and supporting what goes on inside them . In many states these
funds are diverted from basic, essential services such as education. For example California spends on average $47,421 per
inmate a year while the average spent per student a year is only $11,420. (A telling tweet is going around Twitter that sums it up for
many states, "The people of CA are tired of Cadillac prisons & jalopy schools.") So when I find myself labeled as "soft on crime" I
have an old jail comeback: "Don't take my kindness for softness." Restructuring a broken prison system so that it protects and
respects all citizens while holding offenders accountable is not "soft" but commonsense. We need to create prison
conditions, both physical and psychological, that encourage cooperation on all sides and that supports
change as opposed to conflict and calcification of negative behavior. Programs must be developed that
challenge offenders to change their counterproductive behavior. Training in real employable occupations
is essential. And support services must be established that help ex-offenders meet the demands of "going
straight."
2nc
Abolition doesn’t mean tearing the prison walls down – reformism must be the
first step towards abolition and crime
El 6 (Tiyo Attallah Salah. Prison abolitionist, writer and organizer and activist Tiyo Attallah Salah-El has written his autobiography
which includes his early life in Pennsylvania, the life he lived which led to his incarcerated for the last 35 years in SCI Dallas, PA,
becoming a Quaker, a vast and extensive correspondence and organizing work and writing on behalf of prison abolition. “A Call For
the Abolition of Prisons”. 2006. The Real Cost of Prison Project.
http://www.realcostofprisons.org/writing/abolition.html)//JuneC//
In the history of philosophy, there is perhaps no more powerful image than the "cave" described by Socrates in Plato's Republic. This
deep, dark, hole, we are told, is inhabited by "prisoners" bound in such a way that all they can see is the play of shadows on an
interior wall, fleeting shapes that they mistake for reality. For above these hapless souls, outside their underground dwelling, is the
dazzling light of the sun-a sight reached only after an arduous journey upward. For over a quarter of a century, I have been making
that arduous journey, striving and struggling to reach that dazzling light of freedom and justice, not just for myself but also for the
other two million women and men presently housed in that cave. During that journey, I gained new insight regarding the pain of
prisons and the devastation and brutalization of people by capitalism and imperialism. From that painful experience, I have become
an abolitionist of the present prisons system. I may never be able to fully describe the complex dynamic process of how to organize
and bring about the abolition of prisons. However, it is my hope that the views and information presented here will help others to
further develop there own reasons why they would be willing to undertake the struggle to help abolish prisons. The strength of my
vision depended in great measure on what I learned about prison during the twenty-five years of my incarceration and how much I
am willing to continue learning. This type of learning requires a lifelong commitment to continual inquiry and knowledge in order to
arrive at new levels of understanding and insight. To sustain my commitment, I think it is important to develop my own personal
vision of the abolition of prisons to guide me in my efforts of the value of charting such an unusual course in my life. I have learned
that there are many different ways of looking at my current situation. I continue to learn as I live within the rotten, corrupt core of
the criminal justice system. This prison has been a teacher for me. It reflects my own mind. Nevertheless, the prison has not
changed. It is my mind that has changed. When one's mind changes, new possibilities begin to arise. This can be a profoundly
liberating experience. It has taken me beyond my limited preoccupations with myself. It has certainly changed the way I relate to
prisons and the criminal justice system. If we have to be mindful of the ruts our thinking gets us into, then we have to learn to see
and approach things differently. Facing our problems is usually the only way to get past them. There
is an art to facing difficulties in ways that lead to effective solutions. We can, by exercising
imagination, intuition and creativity in our own work, use the pressure of the problems
themselves to propel us through it. It is incumbent upon us to find new ways to break into
the cycle of violence, which characterizes so much of the present corrections and criminal
justice system in this country. The least controversial observation that one can make about the American criminal
justice today is that it is remarkably ineffective, absurdly expensive, grossly inhumane and riddled with ruthlessness and racism. In
my view and views of a growing number of people, it seems clear that the hypotheses that prisons are institutions for control of
people of color is a far more viable one than the notion that prisons are an effort to prevent crime. All serious analyses of the history
of incarceration reveal the same historical thrust: prisons and other systems of punishment are for social control, not crime control.
The criminal justice system is a huge, multibillion dollar industry, and also very subversive of democratic principles. The
establishment has built itself up fantastically over the last decade. And its repressive power has mostly been concentrated on the
black community. The system is a very expensive, unaccountable bureaucracy. There is no more unaccountable system than a
correction system. The corporate media usually frames the debate over the criminal justice system and that arcane realm of the
government contract think tanks, where civilians answerable to no elected official formulate policies and concoct plans that reek
havoc on the poor and minorities, especially on black women and men. Certainly crime has become the most
racially divisive issue for American society today. There has been a turning away of looking
at the social factors and social issues that create crime. Most people do not want to talk about things like
adequate income, employment and anti-poverty programs; all of these are now passé. For that matter, the people are left with the
idea that criminals must somehow be simply wicked persons, quite unlike them and if they can genetically define these criminals, it
is will make life easier for the 'free' society. It is an easy way out. Then one does not have to feel any guilty for what goes on in one's
society. The general public wants their pound of flesh. Does the dominant culture wants to prove a point with blacks, and are the
politicians going to do it with the criminal justice system? Race is the big, ugly secret that lies at the heart of U.S. crime policy. The
criminal justice system is a system run on sound bites and throwaway lines. The system is not interested in anything that would
lower the crime rate, much less in anything decent or human that is going to advance society. It is just a terribly corrupt system. And
of course, when one is talking about crime and criminals, it is very, very easy to fall into the acts of demonizing and stereotyping. Not
only will most people accept it, one can build a political career around it. There is a need to unwind; there is a need to find options, a
lot of options, especially for the lesser offenders who have drug problems but who are now being sent to prison. There is a need to
decarcerate. We must go further than merely condemning prisoners and building more prisons. We have to point the direction in
which the solution lies. We must focus upon alternatives to prisons, and whether what we demand or propose will really eliminate
crimes. We have to create and offer a well thought out program for accomplishing the change and propose a specific form of
alternative with which to replace the present system. These are critical questions that demand workable and acceptable solutions.
For example, how would society function if it abolished prisons? What can be done with the dangerous few? Who would benefit?
Who would be in charge of the new system? This is why abolitionists must be clear about our tactics, and
above all, armed with a workable program that will enable us to reach our goal. We cannot
ignore the lessons that history has already taught us. We must create and project a powerful program for
reaching our revolutionary goal of abolishing prisons. I
strongly suggest we begin a new way of thinking
about abolition. The problems caused by prisons, crime and the criminal justice system
suggest that we may need to take a broader view of certain problems if we hope to solve
them. This approach involves asking ourselves what the extent of the problem actually is
and discerning the relationship between the various isolated parts of the problem and the
problem as a whole. If we do not identify the system correctly in its entirety, we will never
be able to come to a satisfactory solution of the problem because a key domain will always
be missing, the domain of the whole. Such experiences can lead to feelings of frustrations, inadequacy and
insecurity. When self-confidence becomes eroded, it just makes it harder to solve any other problems that come along. Our doubts
about our own abilities to solve the prison problem become self-fulfilling prophecies. They can come to dominate our lives. In these
ways, we effectively make our own limits by our own thoughts processes. Then, too often, we forget that we have created these
boundaries ourselves. Consequently, we get stuck and feel we cannot get beyond them. Therefore, when someone
comes forth with the idea of abolishing prisons, most people react and respond with all
sorts of self-imposed boundaries. Some will even turn a deaf ear to the words calling for
the abolition of prisons. I took on the challenge and the risks of facing the full attack from the criminal justice system
when I came out as an abolitionist. I lost all my privileges and had many of my possessions destroyed by angry guards. I surprised
others and myself with my newfound courage and clarity. I refused to be a slave of the system, I refused to work for the system to
continue to function smoothly. In the process, I discovered my limits receding, and I found myself
capable of doing things that I never thought I can do. The point is that we do not always
know what our true limits are. Prison abolition, like the abolition of slavery, is a long range
goal. Abolition is not simply a moment in time, but a protracted process. Prison abolitionism should not now be
considered a pipe dream but an abolitionist approach demands a solid critical analysis of
crime that is juxtaposed with social structures, plus anti-crime strategies that focus on the
provision of social resources. We must educate the public that prisons need to be abolished as the sole way of
attempting to resolve social problems that are better solved by other more human ways and means. Prison abolition is itself a deeper
and broader critique of society. Abolition and revolution are not new. History is replete with stories of the struggle of people on the
bottom of the social ladder banding together and organizing to bring radical change for the better in their lives and the lives of future
generations. Some struggle succeeded, some failed and others are ongoing. I do not know how long it will take to abolish prisons.
That is akin to asking me how much air is in the universe. Therein is the real challenge—our search for answers must be incessant.
Shouldn't we ask ourselves how we can build new systems from below? How can we create a new common language to define
injustice and to imagine a society without prisons? What is being done to create the new from within the old? Does such a movement
have a chance of surviving and creating change? Survival and victory depend on coordinated action. We must learn how to cooperate
quickly and effectively so as to intensify, broaden and deepen our struggles. We need stronger networks of communication and
support. We must develop a process of dialogue and organization unprecedented in the history of America. Let us strive to give hope
to many that a new kind of thinking about the abolition of prisons is in the making, one capable of inspiring people to come together,
speaking to each other about abolition and revolution. We must strengthen the hope and dreams of freedom, abolition and
revolution. Subcommandante Marcos writes: Here we are, the dead of all time, dying once again, only now with the object of living.
You have to get out of your self to save yourselves. What we seek, what we need and want is that all those people without a party and
organization make agreements about what they want and do not want and become organized in order to achieve it (preferably
through civil and peaceful means), not to take power, but to exercise it. Below are some suggestions for beginning the abolition
process: 1. Accepting the fact that no one person or organization can keep up even in a cursory
manner with all the aspects of struggle, sharing that work through political organizations
is necessary, as is developing supportive and cooporative relations among many
organizations. Therefore, we should consider supporting, listening, learning and exchanging knowledge (not just
"information") with anti-death penalty organizations in their efforts to first bring about a moratorium of the death penalty and the
eventual abolition of the death penalty. When such a goal is achieved, we can build upon that success by inviting them to take the
next revolutionary step and buttress our struggle to work toward abolishing prisons. We would then have a much broader base of
well seasoned activists, supporters, networks, knowledge, communications, information and funding. 2. It would not be
productive to set out with the idea to tear down prisons, but to promote and
transform the present prisons into Healing and Caring Centers. The infrastructure is
already in place for all the basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, medications,
transportation and recreation. Re-training of prison staff toward becoming in-house
teachers, paid at the same pay scale as they are presently being paid. Such a tragedy will
help placate the various guard unions and other misguided pro-prison advocates. Present day
prisons could eventually become Healing and Caring Centers for the homeless, shelters for abused and battered women and
children, meaningful an productive drug and alcohol treatment centers, meaningful education and vocation programs for families
living in abject poverty. Bring new leadership roles into prisons to work along with most treatment personnel. 3. To the best of my
knowledge, there has been little if any mention, much less, serious discussion among abolitionists about what to do with the
dangerous few. I think we can all agree that for the over all well being and safety of society at large, detention is and may always be
required for the small group of people who cause harm to others. This question must first be acknowledged, studied, discussed and
revolved by not only abolitionists, but also among broad-based groups of doctors, judges, community organizations, corrections
personnel, psychologists, legislators and others on the local, state and federal levels. The general public should and must be invited
to take part in these open discussions. This issue will test the resolve of not just abolitionists, but of all involved. Now is the time to
begin thinking and planning tactics and strategies regarding this important and sensitive issue. Creating
a new way of
"Thinking About Prisons" requires the best efforts, ideas and experiences, and honest,
careful, sharp, and critical reflection from all those who are willing to take on this daring
and daunting task. We could and must construct the groundwork for future generations to build a world that is safe and
just. We could and must construct the groundwork for future generations to build a world that is safe and just. Let us begin working
at the edges of what is possible. Let us strive toward a new possibility. Let us fight with the weapon of intelligence. I invite you to join
us.
Prison abolition fails in practice and doesn’t focus on the safety of prisoner while in
captivity
Davis 2k [Angela Davis, prof in the History of Consciousness program @ UC, prison-related activist
since 1970; interviewed by Dylan Rodriguez, Assistant Prof @ UC; “The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A
Conversation”; Social Justice, 27:3=81 (2000:Fall) p.212] DJ
Angela: The seemingly unbreakable link between prison reform and prison development -- referred to by Foucault in his analysis of
prison history -- has created a situation in which progress in prison reform has tended to render the prison more impermeable to
change and has resulted in bigger, and what are considered "better," prisons. The most difficult question for advocates of
prison abolition is how to establish a balance between reforms that are clearly necessary to safeguard the lives of
prisoners and those strategies designed to promote the eventual abolition of prisons as the dominant mode of
punishment. In other words, I do not think that there is a strict dividing line between reform and abolition. For
example, it would be utterly absurd for a radical prison activist to refuse to support the demand for better health
care inside Valley State, California's largest women's prison, under the pretext that such reforms would make the prison a more
viable institution. Demands for improved health care, including protection from sexual abuse and challenges to the myriad
ways in which prisons violate prisoners' human rights, can be integrated into an abolitionist context that elaborates
specific decarceration strategies and helps to develop a popular discourse on the need to shift resources from
punishment to education, housing, health care, and other public resources and services. Dylan: Speaking of
developing a popular discourse, the Critical Resistance gathering in September 1998 seemed to pull together an incredibly wide
array of prison activists -- cultural workers, prisoner support and legal advocates, former prisoners, radical teachers, all kinds of
researchers, progressive policy scholars and criminologists, and many others. Although you were quite clear in the conference's
opening plenary session that the purpose of Critical Resistance was to encourage people to imagine radical strategies for a sustained
prison abolition campaign, it was clear to me that only a few people took this dimension of the conference seriously. That is, it
seemed convenient for people to rejoice at the unprecedented level of participation in this presumably "radical" prison activist
gathering, but the level of analysis and political discussion generally failed to embrace the creative challenge of
formulating new ways to link existing activism to a larger abolitionist agenda . People were generally more interested in
developing an analysis of the prison-industrial complex that incorporated the local work that they were involved in, which I think is
an important practical connection to make. At the same time, I think there is an inherent danger in conflating militant
reform and human rights strategies with the underlying logic of anti-prison radicalism, which conceives of
the ultimate eradication of the prison as a site of state violence and social repression. What is required, at least
in part, is a new vernacular that enables this kind of political dream. How does prison abolition necessitate new political language,
teachings, and organizing strategies? How could these strategies help to educate and organize people inside and outside the prison
for abolition?
Reformism is a prerequisite to any abolitionist agendas
Heiner 3—doctoral student in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (Brady,
Social Justice, Vol. 30, No. 2 (92), War, Dissent, and Justice: A Dialogue (2003), pp. 98-101) DJ
However, we must acknowledge that the line between reformist practices and abolitionist practices is not a
definitive one. For example, though the ultimate goal of an abolitionist movement is the total negation of the
capitalist state-form, this long-term objective must not prevent us from engaging in a host of immediate
struggles to secure the survival and quality of life of those currently imprisoned. We must not allow our
expansive vision to blind us to the immediate struggles of those presently locked down by the system. A movement
that fails to engage in these types of struggles is at odds with the interests of those on the inside, those for
whom these immediate struggles are of utmost urgency.2 A properly radical/ abolitionist movement must work incessantly to
suture the divide (both actual and virtual) between the inside and the outside of the prison, and, more generally,
This is common sense -- your authors are lefty hacks -- reform is the best option
Saul Guevara (Saul Guevara -- writer for LASWC “The Word”, The Prison Industrial Complex: Abolishing
Prisons Is Not the Answer, http://thewordlasc.weebly.com/prisons-should-not-be-abolished--saulguevara.html) //JS
Would you want to be a prisoner in your own house? Well that’s exactly what would happen if prisons were abolished. In the United
States of America we have rules to follow; therefore, people who commit a crime should pay the consequences for it. If
you are accused of doing something that you didn’t commit, you can get yourself a lawyer and fight against those charges. If there is
enough evidence that shows that you are innocent and the jury agrees then perhaps the judge may acquit you but sadly this doesn’t
happen all the time. In the late 1960s through the 1980s, there was a lot of racism, segregation, and oppression going around
harming innocent people. During this time Assata Shakur was persecuted because she wanted to see a change in society, she wanted
equal rights, full social and economic opportunities for black people. Overall, prisons may have their cons, but I feel like
there’re many more pros working for it. Instead of spending lots of money to abolish prisons, we should spend money on
reforming them and finding techniques to reduce the mistakes and flaws in the prison system to make them work more
appropriately. According to Dictionary.com, Prisons are buildings for the confinement of persons held while awaiting trial, persons
sentenced after convictions. After reading about Assata’s experiences in the prisons she was held waiting to be trialed at, I would say
that her definition of prison was more than just buildings of confinement; they were almost like hell with never ending brutal
punishments. It seems like while she was in prison there were no rules or restrictions as for the treatment from the guards to the
prisoners. Assata was a prime example on how she was victimized and used by the Prison Industrial Complex. There were times
when the prison ward would lock Assata in solitaire confinement because she refused to get physically checked by a white doctor
who was up to no good. Being locked in solitaire confinement for months for no reason mentally damaged Assata. Assata was not the
same after being released from solitaire confinement; she said that she was in there for so long that she became quiet and was
forgetting how to speak. They treated her as if she were an animal and had no human rights. According to The Engaged Zen
Foundation, a Prison Industrial Complex is a self-perpetuating industry based on the subjugation of an increasing segment of our
communities by racial and economic scapegoating. The white government groups that were after all of the political activists decided
that Assata was being a “treat” to society because of her revolutionary ways of thinking. The police tried to frame her in a bank
robbery that she didn’t participate in, but they said that the lady in the picture from the surveillance camera was indeed her just
because she was black. She was also so charged and accused of killing a police officer at the Turnpike. They were trying to convict her
of any crime someone else committed and make it seem as if she was the one responsible for those crimes. In the Assata
autobiography, Angela Davis comments about how looking back twenty-five years it is damaging to see how they brought Assata
down and how messed up the government was and still is in a political way. While she was being persecuted the police and the media
hid the message that she was trying to send out to the black community by making her a victim of scapegoat and ruining her image
around the whole country. She also talks about how prisons use up public tax money to maintain the prisons open and functioning
and how it only benefits the private corporations. The prison industrial complex method is to get rid of the bad people out in the
streets committing crimes and to mainly use minorities to make the private owners of the industries richer in the white communities
from within prisons. Assata along with other of her revolutionary peers were imprisoned all because of their political opinions
becoming victims of the prison industrial complex and scapegoat. While reading Assata's autobiography, I became aware of how
brutal she was being treated in the prisons as if she were not a human. Times have changed and there should be less racism in prison
in today’s society. Therefore, I feel like prisons shouldn’t be abolished; they should be reformed so that there isn’t that
much maltreatment in prisons. After seeing many prisoners going through a hard time in prison and after many complaints
about the guards being submitted, there have been laws created to protect the rights of prisoners to get treated
like they are humans and not animals. According to Paul Gendreau and David Keyes, from the article, “Making
prisons safer and more humane environments”, they have theories on how they can make the prisons a better place for the inmates.
They have three strategies to help out the inmates; first, they said that we could better the prisons by
looking into predicting misconduct of prisoners. Secondly, they proposed to come up with programs that
reduce misconduct behavior in prisons amongst themselves and the guards. Thirdly, to create proactive
managerial policies that have direct implications for improving the life of the incarcerated and their
keepers.
Bail reform and population reductions are key
WSJ 7/6 (Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2015, Bipartisan Prison Reform,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB12104187675579354294504581043790644676376) //JS
New York City recently settled a class-action lawsuit joined by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara designed to combat inmate abuses at
Rikers Island. The settlement is progress, but it’s also a case study in the too frequent failure of government prison policies. Abuses
at Rikers have made headlines for years, but the human costs were driven home last month when former inmate Kalief Browder
killed himself in the Bronx. His death really began in 2010, when as a 16-year-old he was locked up in Rikers to await a trial that
never came for a robbery he insisted he did not commit. Browder came to public attention in an October 2014 profile in the New
Yorker. The article detailed how the criminal justice system failed him every step of the way: bail too high for his family to pay;
Bronx prosecutors who kept putting the case off; a public defender who had almost no direct contact with his client; beatings from
corrections officers and other inmates; and the three years he spent at Rikers—much of it in solitary confinement—without having
been tried or convicted. In February 2014, a mentally ill former Marine jailed on a trespassing charge baked to death in a sweltering
Rikers cell. A few months later, a 79-page report by Mr. Bharara scored Rikers for the “deep-seated culture of violence” in the
treatment of adolescent males. Last month Mr. Bharara indicted three corrections officers for the beating death of one inmate, while
another Rikers guard was sentenced to five years in the death of another. In some ways Rikers has the same problems as any jail,
where violence is a threat to everyone inside—including the guards. Yet Rikers stands out for its human degradation and operational
breakdown. A good part of that is its sheer size, with an inmate population of about 10,000, some 400 of whom have been waiting
more than two years for a trial. There aren’t enough guards to protect themselves from prisoner attacks, much less to protect
vulnerable prisoners. Here we’re with Martin Horn, who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and served as
Commissioner of the City Department of Correction under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Mr. Horn says large urban jails are too
big to be managed effectively. They need to be broken up into smaller jails . Another answer is to be
smarter about whom we send to jail. Bail reform is vital to reducing the prison population, says Mr. Horn, so that the
truly dangerous are locked up while the Kalief Browders are not. Smaller numbers and smaller prisons are no magic fix. But
bringing jail populations down to a more manageable size would help jails better address other issues from
drug addiction and mental illness to the black markets and violence that now flourish. Being smarter and more
humane about jails and prisons addresses a government failure, and the cause should cross political boundaries. Jail is
not meant to be a country club but it shouldn’t be a jungle, and an inmate’s right to personal safety and a
speedy trial needs to mean something. Rikers is a source of shame for every law-abiding New Yorker, and to start fixing it
we need to cut it down to size.