I first heard about carceral feminism versus abolition feminism in Futures, by Lauren Bastide. I remember discussing it a few months later with one of my friends. The conversation was about cancelling famous people when they are accused of gender or sexual violence. It made me think of how Lauren Bastide mentioned that one of abolition feminists takes are that excluding people who commit gender or sexual violence from society doesn’t allow us to understand and treat the root problem, it treats it as an individualistic case. But in this day and age, we should know that gender and sexual violence are committed too widely - and mostly by men - for us not to consider that they take place in a more complex societal context.

I picked up Abolition. Feminism. Now. to learn more about the abolition feminism movement. Written by four abolitionist feminists, Angela Y.Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R.Meiners and Beth E.Richie, it helps us understand the close relationship between feminism and abolitionism and the necessity of ending the carceral system if we seek to end public and private violence in prisons, police forces and people’s homes. The book is divided in three parts : abolition - feminism - now, navigating through they key events and movements that have helped shape the abolition feminist movement.

The term « abolition » is used to define a movement where we look at individual cases of « crime » as broader societal concerns. This will help us to reveal the greater threats to safety and freedom, taking care of the problem at its root. Abolition wants to create lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment - it includes much more than just tearing prisons : structural racism, heteropatriarchy, transphobia… everything that fuels violence. I particularly liked this example : today, we would think it is normal to take children away from their parents because of a rats infestation in their home. We wouldn’t necessarily think to question why this has happened, and who was enabled this to happen. Why not look at blaming the landlord or the larger social system? Abolition means understanding that harm is not individual, it is endemic and ideologically sustained.

To understand the abolitionist movement, it is necessary to understand the harm that the carceral system causes. Medical neglect, limited access to condoms, overcrowding, bad food are some of the reasons why prisons are harmful. It is important to look at how racism is rooted in our current carceral system : there are currently more black men in prison than there were black men enslaved in 1850. Research has clearly established that incarceration particularly harms black, colored and marginalized people.

Gender and sexual violence are the most pandemic forms of violence in the world but they are often understood in individualistic approaches, which disallows us to understand and treat the systemic root issues. Persecuting individual civilian men who perpetrate gender violence has not helped reduce it. Furthermore, the way the state handles crime - determining the nature of the problem, deciding on the solution, categorizing people as either deserving of freedom or not - is similar to tactics abusers use in relationships : arbitrary authority, attribution of blame to justify punishment and expulsion.

To a lot of people, imagining a world with no prisons seems completely unrealistic, delusional and even dangerous. That is because the current prison system has been made to make it seem completely natural and permanent. We are made to feel like there would be no other safe way of handling crime. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall effected a « disarticulation » of crime and punishment, explaining that crime isn’t a logical cause of punishment, we have made it appear that way. People say « don’t do crime if you can’t do time » but we have to understand that that is a social construction that we have been made to believe. In reality, there are many other factors that are determinants of going to prison, other than committing crime : race, gender, class and sexuality are some of them.

Change is always considered a threat when it doesn’t serve interest. For example, Reconstruction was seen as a huge threat to white property holders as it was going against a system that served their interests. When questioning a social system, you should ask yourself the question : what and who’s interests does this serve? So in this case, if we were to look at crime in a less individualistic way, who would be held responsible? Racism, neoliberalism, budget cuts in service and welfare sectors, privatisation and no funding for affordable housing and social services are a few examples. This could explain why our current prison system is made to seem unchangeable - changing it wouldn’t serve interest.