Content Warning: This article will contain mentions of sexual assault, domestic violence, and murder.
Over the past few decades, the U.S. criminal justice system has been called into question as an effective means of addressing crime. More and more people have criticized the harsh punishments used by the prison system, claiming them to be ineffective and unjust. In this context, multiple alternatives to the current legal system have emerged, including prison reform and abolition. Prison reform focuses on making prisons more rehabilitative, reducing recidivism, and making adjustments to the police to create a more equitable system. Prison abolition, on the other hand, believes that reform is not enough and instead advocates for the dismantling of the entire current legal system. Prison abolition has sparked several debates surrounding its feasibility and effectiveness. Abolition, as with many other social justice and transformation movements, can be difficult for many to imagine. What would a society without prisons look like? For the most part, this hesitance towards the movement is to be expected — a result of the colonial ideologies that have been so severely normalized throughout our lives. It is not until we research the true history and impacts of the prison system that we can begin to unlearn what we have been taught.
At its core, prison abolition is an acknowledgment that U.S. prisons are not an inherent function of a safe society, but instead, a system of oppression implemented by colonizers to control marginalized communities. Even today, prisons do not reduce crime, but instead temporarily cage its perpetrators. In this way, prisons create an ideology that immediately demonizes those who commit crimes rather than attempting to understand what societal or systemic factors may have influenced their behavior. Prison abolitionists posit that the deconstruction of systemic oppression — as well as the investment in community-based, restorative justice — will reduce the prevalence of crime and, with it, the need for incarceration. When many hear the word “abolition”, they struggle to conceptualize a future without prisons; rather than jumping to panic, I urge readers to ask themselves why they are so afraid of pushing for a system safer for everybody.
Myth: Prison abolitionists want all criminals released and all prisons destroyed overnight.
This misconception of prison abolition as a hyper-accelerated process is far from the truth. Abolition is not a process to be completed in a day, a month, or even a year. It involves such large systemic changes that we will not likely see an abolitionist future in our lifetime.
Prison abolition is complex, but a large part includes divesting from prisons and investing in communities. Support, counseling, and an end to systemic oppressions will help reduce crime rates and render prisons virtually obsolete. The “transitional period” between our current system and an abolitionist state is not certain. It’s scary, not knowing exactly what to do. But abolition is about experimenting, because at the end of the day, our current system causes more harm than good.
Myth: Prison abolitionists think no one should face repercussions for their actions.
Many people think of prison abolition as letting people get away with crime and harm with no repercussions. This is not what abolition entails; rather, we focus on outcomes of harm that will create a better society. This involves the distinction between punishment and consequences. This is one of the most important distinctions within abolition, in which “punishment” refers to our current legal system: inflicting harm or suffering on someone because they committed a crime. On the other hand, consequences focus on various questions: how can the offender repair the harm they committed? How can we make the community feel safe? What are the victim’s needs? Whose obligations are those needs? While abolitionists oppose punishment as a way to deal with harm, we are looking specifically to create adequate consequences. In an interview, abolitionist Shira Hassan explains that:
“[Opposing punishment] does not mean, however, there should be no consequences. It means real consequences. Consequences that really matter. It means transforming the conditions that exist in the first place for this to even have happened. It is really critical for people to think about the difference between punishment and consequences. Punishment often is actually not the same as transformation.”
As abolitionists, we understand that there needs to be consequences — but prisons are not the only option in the way we’ve been taught to think.
Myth: Prison abolitionists don’t care about victims’ rights.
The relationship between prison abolition and assault is an incredibly nuanced topic and one that is still being discussed in abolitionist spaces. When asked, “What are we going to do with rapists without jails?”, as abolitionists, we find it most useful to flip that question on its head: What are we doing with rapists now? Studies have shown that 1 out of every 6 women in the U.S. will be sexually assaulted, but only 6% of rapists will ever face jail time. Clearly, something is not working; clearly, something needs to change. Prison and police reform is not the answer; we have tried time and time again, and it does not work. We cannot change these systems from within when they were fundamentally created to control marginalized people. The entire system must be dismantled.
It can be beneficial to think of harm in three “sectors”: the impacted party (victim), the responsible party (offender), and the wider community. Now, let’s analyze these groups when thinking of prisons. If we incarcerate someone who has committed sexual assault or domestic violence, how does this affect…
- The victim?
While many victims urge for the incarceration of their perpetrator, not all do; A 2016 survey done by the Alliance for Safety and Justice found that 6 out of 10 violent crime survivors prefer shorter prison sentences and more programs for rehabilitation and accountability. They reported that a majority of victims wanted increased investments in education, mental health services, and community service programs as opposed to investments in the prison system. When we actually listen to survivors of violent crime, we find that they don’t always want longer, harsher sentences.
Further, incarcerating the perpetrator provides no actual financial, mental, or physical support for the survivor. A RAINN survey found that only around 1 in 3 victims of sexual assault report it, largely due to fears of not being taken seriously by the legal system. Many survivors who did report either did not feel satisfied with the legal system or were treated poorly by law enforcement officials. In fact, the legal system often re-victimizes survivors by placing them in traumatic courtroom situations. Evidently, our current system doesn’t work, and something needs to change.
Another important point here is that prison abolition has been accused of not listening to survivors. However, some of the leading voices in the abolitionist movement are themselves survivors of sexual assault or other violent crime. Author Mariame Kaba is also a survivor of sexual violence and has done immense work in abolitionist approaches to ending sexual assault. The reality is that survivors have, for decades, played roles in abolition. To ignore them and their voices is to re-victimize and re-isolate them.
- The offender?
Prisons are sites of violence in themselves. Many incarcerated individuals face violence from other prisoners or from prison staff. For example, since 2023, 115 incarcerated individuals in L.A. jails have died as a result of abuse. In these violent environments, there is little to no opportunity for offenders to reflect upon the violence they themselves have enacted. Instead, their abusive patterns will only be reinforced. As a result, crime recidivism rates in the U.S. are some of the highest in the world. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 63.8% of violent offenders have re-committed a crime upon being released from prison. This isn’t a result of violent offenders being unable to change; it’s a result of our system not providing them the opportunity to change.
Many people view this as an issue of accountability. But when you think about it, is jailing someone really having them take accountability? Or does it actually allow them to not think about their actions in any meaningful context? In an abolitionist system, reintegration programs would put the offender face-to-face with the reality of their actions and guide them towards accountability and change.
- The community?
Prisons are not an effective way to solve gender violence, even if the majority of violent offenders are successfully imprisoned. Putting away perpetrators is not the same as ending an issue. You can put as many rapists in prison as you want, but as long as systemic misogyny still exists, women will continue to suffer because jailing one individual perpetrator does not reduce violent crime as a whole. We need to, instead, focus on the systemic conditions that allow violence to be so prevalent in the first place. Prison abolition comes in two simultaneous parts: abolition of our current system, and creation of a new one. Our new system would focus on dismantling our culture of violence to reduce violent crime at the root.
Further, it’s important to note that abolition does not always involve the reintegration of an offender into a community. Referring to the previous discussion on consequences, an adequate consequence for violent crime may very well include a specific offender being restricted from the community to ensure community safety. However, this must look different than prisons. You can agree that some degree of separation is necessary for violent offenders like murderers and rapists. At the same time, you can also agree that imprisonment is not synonymous with justice.
Overall, abolitionists try to understand that incarceration doesn’t actually reduce crime rates. Many victims are retraumatized by the criminal legal system and don’t feel satisfied with the outcome. In addition, law enforcement officials are often the abusers themselves, and prisons are sites of violence. Again, this is a very complex topic, and we don’t have all the answers, but we understand that our current system is insufficient and must change.
You can read more about the relationship between violent crime and prison abolition in Mariame Kaba’s We Do This ‘Til We Free Us.
Myth: Without the threat of prisons, there’s nothing stopping people from committing crimes.
The biggest counterpoint to this is that it doesn’t line up with our current reality. The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world, holding 20% of the world’s incarcerated people while only having 5% of the entire world’s population. If prisons truly kept us safe, we would have the safest country in the world, but we don’t. As of 2025, the U.S. ranks 128th on the Global Peace Index. On the other hand, Iceland and Ireland rank one and two, respectively. Both Iceland and Ireland have reduced their crime rates not through mass incarceration, but through community policing and cultural values that oppose violence. While both of these countries still have prisons, they are much more focused on rehabilitation as opposed to harsh punishments. We don’t need harsh punishments and prisons to reduce crime; rehabilitative services and community-based efforts are much more effective.
Overall, when we talk about prison abolition, people understandably have a hard time thinking about it. Something we have to realize is that the system was created in such a way that makes us believe it is the only option. In understanding abolition, I’ve begun to re-evaluate everything I’ve come to believe as normal. Mentalities like “do the crime, pay the time” may seem like inherent functions of society, but in reality, they are colonial ideologies. By understanding the calculated construction of these systems, I’ve begun to better understand a future different from our current criminal legal system. It’s a future of hope, justice, and collective liberation.