Abolition of police and prisons
Abolish is to flourish! Against the prison industrial complex and for transformative justice.
See Critical Resistance's definitions below:
The Prison Industrial Complex
The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.
Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for "tough on crime" politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.
Abolition
PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.
From where we are now, sometimes we can't really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn't just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It's also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.
Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.
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I'm not the person you asked but these are questions I've been thinking about too as I grapple with discussions around abolition of police and prisons.
I've known people who were driven to move states by a persistent and threatening stalker because nobody would do anything to stop the stalker, right up to a cop casually recommending they get a gun and take care of it themselves. I think the perception of 'dangerousness' is ripe for abuse, but I also I think if your society doesn't have a mechanism for physically separating violent or threatening people from their victims, you'll either get people trying to solve their problems through violence themselves, or you'll end up with the Nazi bar problem, where decent members of your society flee your more problematic ones. The PTSD subreddit was full of discussions around the dread people felt at the impending date of their abusers being released from prison. Prisons are a terrible system, and I know the justice system puts victims through the wringer. But for some victims of abuse, rape, and other violence, knowing the people who hurt them cannot reach them seems to be pretty critical to their recovery and basic health. So how does a better society provide that basic safety?
Exile seems tempting but I think it's worse, it has the downsides of still cutting the person off from their life and any resources that helped them regulate or mitigate their behavior, with the added problem of basically foisting them on the society's unprepared neighbors, and of being harder to enforce.
Counseling without detainment may leave too much room for them to escalate, intimidate, or change tactics, at which point we're kind of back to the victim either fleeing or taking matters into their own hands.
I'd also love answers to this