Update from yesterday - Prisoners Face Retaliation for Protest at MCF-Stillwater

Abolition communism is not a qualitatively new form of communism but rather an integration of abolitionist and communist consciousness. Abolition communism is the idea that communist measures must simultaneously be abolitionist steps. This does not mean that abolitionist steps such as the defunding of police and decarceration of prisoners are necessarily communist measures, though these steps do make communist organizing under capitalism easier. Rather, communist measures implemented by abolitionist communists dismantle systems of policing and incarceration simultaneous to dismantling wage-labor, the State, work, et cetera, precisely because policing and incarceration are central to the rule of capital. The freeing of the prisoners and setting fire to the prisons does more for the proletariat than a hundred programs.

Robin D.G. Kelley talks on what abolition communism means as a horizon and as a practice.

Being personally thrilled with someone going to prison is anyone’s prerogative, and we understand that a person may feel joy at another’s incapacitation if that individual has repeatedly and unrepentantly caused grievous harm. Let’s be clear though: advocating for someone’s imprisonment is not abolitionist. Mistaking emotional satisfaction for justice is also not abolitionist.

Abolitionism is not a politics mediated by emotional responses. Or, as we initially wanted to title this piece, abolition is not about your fucking feelings. Of course, everything involves feelings, but celebrating anyone’s incarceration is counter to PIC abolition.

This may frustrate or anger people who want to claim an abolitionist identity or politic despite not being ready to operate from basic abolitionist principles. We understand. For years, both of us have facilitated community accountability processes to address interpersonal harms (particularly involving sexual and intimate partner violence). As survivors of sexual harm, accountability is always at the forefront in our consciousness. We understand how damaging and serious sexual violence is. And we too have sometimes wished that abolition wasn’t so rigorous in its demands of our politics.

While abolition is a flexible praxis contingent upon social conditions and communal needs, it is built on a set of core principles. Everyone doesn’t have to be an abolitionist. But if you declare yourself to be, you’re committing to some basic obligations....

As PIC abolitionists and transformative justice practitioners, we’re always asked, “What about the rapists?” Lately, the question has been phrased like this: “Well, surely you don’t mean that R. Kelly shouldn’t be in prison?” We do.

What we tell people is this: the criminal legal system will never “bring to justice” every person who does harm in our society. This is impossible. We cannot under any system “prosecute” our way out of harm. As a strategy for justly evaluating and adjudicating sexual harm, the criminal legal system has proven, empirically and qualitatively, an utter failure. Relying on it as the sole response to sexual violence has failed to offer opportunities for accountability and healing for those directly impacted by that violence; in fact, the criminal legal system does not even purport to care about whether survivors of sexual violence heal. Billions of dollars are poured yearly into a criminal legal system most people involved in proceedings of say doesn’t deliver the justice they seek.

~ Mariame Kaba and Rachel Herzing, We Do This 'Til We Free Us, “Transforming Punishment: What Is Accountability without Punishment?”

Excerpt:

Although Shaw’s action was particularly dramatic, rebellion on the part of prisoners and detainees in the face of inhumane conditions is not rare. In prisons, jails, and detention centers all across the country, prisoners and detainees are consistently participating in a mostly spontaneous, decentralized, and often leaderless social movement against the United States’ massive, and historically unprecedented, carceral archipelago. Most of those actions pass largely unnoticed as law enforcement agencies and departments of correction work to minimize their social impact.

Abolish Criminology presents critical scholarship on criminology and criminal justice ideologies and practices, alongside emerging freedom-driven visions and practices for new world formations.

The book introduces readers to a detailed history and analysis of crime as a concept and its colonizing trajectories into existence and enforcement. These significant contexts buried within peculiar academic histories and classroom practices are often overlooked or unknown outside academic and public discussions, causing the impact of racializing-gendering-sexualizing histories to extend and grow through criminology’s creation of crime, extending how the concept is weaponized and enforced through the criminal legal system. It offers written, visual, and poetic teachings from the perspectives of students, professors, imprisoned and formerly imprisoned persons, and artists. This allows readers to engage in multi-sensory, inter-disciplinary, and multi-perspective teachings on criminology’s often discussed but seldom interrogated mythologies on violence and danger, and their wide-reaching enforcements through the criminal legal system’s research, theories, agencies, and dominant cultures.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/4661775

Le documentaire "Produire la menace" révèle comment les agences de sécurité canadiennes incitent des citoyens vulnérables à commettre des crimes pour justifier leurs budgets. Il se concentre sur l'histoire de John (Omar) Nuttall et Amanda (Ana) Korody, manipulés par la police pour tenter un attentat. Bien que libérés, cette tactique est répandue. Les coûts de sécurité augmentent avec l'utilisation d'agents provocateurs, alimentant une industrie de plusieurs milliards de dollars. L'opacité entourant les services secrets rend difficile de connaître l'étendue de ces pratiques. Le film vise à sensibiliser le public à ces méthodes et à leur utilisation potentielle contre des groupes environnementalistes et autochtones.

Invidious link

Relying on state violence to curb domestic violence only ends up harming the most marginalized women.

While its adherents would likely reject the descriptor, carceral feminism describes an approach that sees increased policing, prosecution, and imprisonment as the primary solution to violence against women.

Casting policing and prisons as the solution to domestic violence both justifies increases to police and prison budgets and diverts attention from the cuts to programs that enable survivors to escape, such as shelters, public housing, and welfare. And finally, positioning police and prisons as the principal antidote discourages seeking other responses, including community interventions and long-term organizing.

By relying solely on a criminalized response, carceral feminism fails to address these social and economic inequities, let alone advocate for policies that ensure women are not economically dependent on abusive partners. Carceral feminism fails to address the myriad forms of violence faced by women, including police violence and mass incarceration. It fails to address factors that exacerbate abuse, such as male entitlement, economic inequality, the lack of safe and affordable housing, and the absence of other resources.

Carceral feminism abets the growth of the state’s worst functions, while obscuring the shrinking of its best. At the same time, it conveniently ignores the anti-violence efforts and organizing by those who have always known that criminalized responses pose further threats rather than promises of safety.

Many prison reformists yearn for the end of imprisonment but find themselves confronted by questions which seem difficult to answer:

• What do we do about those who pose “a danger” to society? Don’t we have to solve that problem before we can advocate the abolition of prisons?

• Is it possible to work for short term prison reforms without being coopted?

• If we devote our energies to abolition, are we not abandoning prisoners to intolerable conditions?

• How can we work for needed prison reforms which require structural change within the society, before a new social order comes about?

As some of these important questions are addressed, we will discover that many reforms can be achieved in an abolition context. The primary issue for abolitionists is not always one of reform over/against abolition. There are “surface reforms” which legitimize or strengthen the prison system, and there are “abolishing-type reforms” which gradually diminish its power and function. Realizing the differences requires some radical shifts in our perceptions, lest we fall into the trap which has plagued earlier generations. Our goal is to replace prison, not improve it.

Over the years, Critical Resistance has generated numerous organizing resources to resist policing. As an abolitionist organization, Critical Resistance supports abolitionist reforms to dismantle the systems of policing and works to create viable alternatives in our communities. From defunding strategies to building alternatives to community safety and defense, each anti-policing resource Critical Resistance has made bolsters the grassroots work of our chapters’ projects and campaigns, and materializes CR’s theory of change: dismantle, change, build. We hope our allies and movements partners find these resources useful and are used to amplify wins against policing, for prison industrial complex abolition around the world.

A list of fun infographics on various abolitionist topics

The three flavors of Abolition we have encountered are as follows: (1) autonomist (2) insurrectionary (3) and procedural:

1. Autonomist Abolition entails a strategy of fugitivity or constant refusal of the instruments of capture and their “catch all solutions” while, at the same time, building hyperlocal (though dispersed in undetectable networks) infrastructures for sustaining bodies (people, collectives, swarms) in resistance.

2. Insurrectionary Abolition entails a direct confrontation and antagonizing of the “big P” Police and its constant attempts to maintain order, while simultaneously attempting to liberate occupied territories.

3. Procedural Abolition entails winning and defending non-reformist reforms enshrined in policies that diminish the reach of the carceral state while simultaneously redirecting collective capacities towards social infrastructures that do not reinstate carceral instruments of capture and control.