A consensus among penologists over the past decades has been that prisons have not met the purpose they were designed for, and their implications on societies are no longer positive. Observations on people who have been to the prisons show that the prisons make life harder in and after serving a term and harm a person’s life instead of improving it. The trends in the prisons have prompted a common perception by the prison abolitionist movement that prisons are ineffective and should be abolished. The current analysis delves into this topic and evaluates if the prison abolitionist movement has been successful, what needs improvement, the lessons learned from the movement, and how other social movements can learn from it. The treatise is anchored on the hypothesis that the prison abolitionist movement has failed to meet its intended goals.
The prison abolitionist movement has failed to convince the stakeholders, like policymakers, that the prison system is ineffective and should be abolished. The movement ought to have compiled adequate data from the prisons to educate the relevant stakeholders and convince them to abolish prisons. According to Angela (2003), prisons cause literal and psychological isolation among convicts, making it hard for them to survive in the communities. The author also observes that the number of people in prisons has been increasing over the years, which implies that people do not fear prisons and continue to commit crimes. Also, victimization, racial discrimination, and other disparities affect the prison system, with over 47% of incarcerated persons having been victims of unfair treatment and victimization (Reisneret al., 2014). Further research also shows that prisons are no longer correction centers. According to Lamusse (2021), prisons are “hyper-productive factories of injustice, oppression, immiseration and violence.” Although the abolitionist movement has contributed to reduced animosities and better prison services, the data herein should be adequate for the movement to convince the authorities to abolish the prisons entirely.
The abolitionist movement could enhance its operations by encouraging a more effective approach to inducing systematic prison abolition. According to Angela (2003), the primary purpose of the prisons was to create a correction and reform center. However, this approach changed, and imprisonment is now the punishment for crimes committed. Therefore, the abolitionist movement should take this as part of its approach to advocating for abolition. Also, prisons today escalate social injustices in contemporary society. For instance, transgender people, women, and people from minority races were susceptible to social injustices like discrimination, violence, victimization, and denial of health services (Reisneret al., 2014). The abolitionist movement should use this information to challenge the authorities to abolish the prisons for propagating the vices that many other institutions fight hard. Lastly, the abolitionist movement should hold frequent awareness campaigns to educate the public about its intentions and rationales. Such efforts could increase the movement’s success.
The lesson learned from this analysis is that prisons are obsolete and no longer serve the primary purpose intended by the reformers. Prisons today support social ills that the government rights through the social justice systems and the human rights laws. Therefore, instead of changing society for the better, prisons are sources of racial, gender, and class discrimination. Another lesson is that the prison abolitionist movement could achieve its goals by changing its approach. Using statistical facts and engaging the public could lead to better results. Other social movements could use these lessons to enhance their activities and improve the rate at which they change the communities.
Conclusively, the analysis shows the successes and failures of the prison abolitionist movement. Evidence from various sources indicates that the movement has made much progress but has yet to reach its goals. Researchers show that the prison system in the US is no longer a correction system but a platform where racial discrimination, victimization, and other social vices thrive. A different approach in the future could help adjust this trend and increase the success rate of the movement. Other social movements could learn from the failures and successes of the abolitionist movement to better their focus and achieve more goals in the future.
References
Angela, D. (2003). Are Prisons Obsolete? Steven Stories Press
Lamusse, T. (2021). Doing Justice Without Prisons: A Framework to Build the Abolitionist Movement. Socialism and Democracy, 35(2-3), pp. 300–322.
Reisner, S. L., Bailey, Z., & Sevelius, J. (2014). Racial/ethnic disparities in history of incarceration, experiences of victimization, and associated health indicators among transgender women in the US. Women & health, 54(8), 750-767.
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