Discussions about abolition of prison and police on social media this month have led to continued calls for “alternatives.” What are we supposed to do instead of calling the police? What responses are there other than a carceral system for dealing with crime?
Influential abolitionist Mariame Kaba expressed well the challenge of answering that question, in a couple of recent Twitter threads:
She makes two essential points to keep in mind when we talk about “alternatives” to prison:
- Various alternatives exist, including restorative justice, transformative justice, and community accountability. But no one program will provide a single overarching system to replace the system of prison and policing. Instead, the alternatives are different ways that different communities are finding ways, unofficially, to address harm in non-carceral ways.
- All of these alternatives are always voluntary programs. A mandated system that replaces prisons will just recreate its problems.
It’s essential to understand that the premise of abolition is that each and every one of us can be empowered to help address harm in a small but significant way. Our job as abolitionists isn’t to create a new system to replace prisons and take away our responsibility to act, but instead to act in situations in which we find ourselves to prevent and address harm.
What we can do, along with advocating for the end of the prison-industrial complex, is continue to build up alternatives wherever and however they’re possible, understanding that our goal isn’t a united system but instead a patchwork of programs that meet specific community needs.
What are some of the options, and how can you learn more about them?
- Restorative justice focuses on meeting the needs of the person harmed and the person responsible for the harm, with the goal of restoring relationships. The Catholic Mobilizing Network has excellent resources on RJ.
- Transformative justice focuses on changing the conditions that made the harm occur, in situations where “restoration” isn’t a helpful goal because the underlying situation before the harm was unjust and there isn’t a healthy relationship to restore. TransformHarm.org is an invaluable resource with information on transformative justice as well as restorative justice.
- Community accountability processes are similar to transformative justice, in that they are processes developed by specific communities to meet their specific needs to prevent and address harm. More information is available through Transform Harm.
The goal is to find resources that will help you and your community understand how to make small steps towards safety and healing outside of the carceral system, to take small, concrete, voluntary actions as alternatives to prisons and policing.
It is countercultural in our society to consider ourselves empowered to take action. We expect all action to need to be delegated to “officials” or “authorities.” But the goal of restorative justice, transformative justice, and community accountability processes is to help individuals draw on the strengths of their own communities to take responsibility for healing harm.