Congress votes to find fauci in contempt

AProudLefty

Thread 'Grok, do leftists want prisons abolished?'

No. Most people on the left do not want prisons abolished. “Leftists” is a broad, imprecise label covering mainstream liberals/Democrats, progressives, social democrats, socialists, anarchists, and others. Support for full prison abolition is a minority position concentrated among radical activists, some academics, and specific organizations on the far left.

Where the idea actually comes from

Prison abolition is a real current within radical left thought. It draws on figures such as Angela Davis, organizations like Critical Resistance, and strands of anarchism and Marxist analysis that...
  • Like
 
Sailor said:
No doubt about that. If you have time learn how do reloads. That comes in handy also.
Click to expand...

Indeed.

BTW, here's some additional info:

Yes, abolitionist frameworks—particularly those focused on prisons and policing—explicitly aim to eliminate those institutions rather than reform them.


These frameworks treat police and prisons as illegitimate or irredeemable systems that reproduce harm, racial hierarchy, and social control. The goal is not better training, body cameras, or reduced sentences, but the end of the institutions themselves, replaced by alternative forms of accountability and safety.


Core Ideas​


Abolitionists distinguish their project from reform:


  • Reform accepts the existence of police and prisons and tries to make them fairer or less lethal.
  • Abolition rejects the premise that these institutions can ever be just or effective at producing safety. It views them as outgrowths of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism that manage surplus populations and enforce inequality.

Central concepts include:


  • The prison-industrial complex (or carceral state): prisons and policing as interconnected systems of profit, labor control, and racial domination rather than neutral responses to crime.
  • Non-reformist reforms: changes that shrink the system’s power and capacity rather than expand or legitimize it (e.g., closing jails rather than building “nicer” ones).
  • Transformative justice and restorative justice: community-based processes that address harm without relying on the state to punish. These emphasize healing for survivors, accountability for people who cause harm, and changing the conditions that produce violence.
  • Focus on root causes: poverty, housing instability, mental health crises, lack of education and jobs, and systemic racism. Abolitionists argue that addressing these reduces the need for coercive institutions.

Intellectual and Organizational Roots​


Key sources and figures include:


  • Angela Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) and her broader work arguing that prisons are a modern continuation of slavery and racial control.
  • Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s analysis of “organized abandonment” and the political economy of incarceration (Golden Gulag).
  • Mariame Kaba and organizations such as Critical Resistance, which popularized the slogan “We don’t need more police; we need fewer prisons.”
  • Earlier Black radical, anarchist, and feminist traditions, including the 1970s prison movement, the Attica uprising, and critiques of the carceral state by scholars in critical race theory and abolition feminism.

The framework gained mainstream visibility after the 2020 protests following George Floyd’s death. Slogans such as “Abolish the police,” “Defund the police,” and “Police free futures” circulated widely. Some advocates treated “defund” as a transitional demand toward full abolition; others used it more modestly to mean shifting budgets toward social services.


Stated Goals and Alternatives​


Explicit goals commonly include:


  • Eliminating prisons and jails as sites of confinement.
  • Dismantling police departments as currently constituted.
  • Ending cash bail, solitary confinement, and other practices seen as inherent to the system.
  • Building parallel systems of community safety: violence interrupters, mental-health response teams, housing-first approaches, transformative justice circles, and mutual aid networks.

Proponents argue that most social harms (poverty-related property crime, interpersonal violence rooted in trauma, mental-health crises) are better addressed outside the criminal legal system. They point to data showing high rates of recidivism, the limited deterrent effect of incarceration for many offenses, and the disproportionate impact on Black and poor communities.


Variations Within the Framework​


Not every person or group who uses abolitionist language holds identical views:


  • Some are absolute: no police, no prisons, under any circumstances.
  • Others are more gradualist or strategic: reduce the footprint of the carceral state dramatically while building alternatives, accepting limited coercive capacity for the most serious interpersonal violence in the interim.
  • Some focus primarily on prisons; others treat policing and prisons as inseparable.
  • There are overlaps with broader left projects (anti-capitalism, decolonization, anti-racism) and occasional tensions with more conventional progressive reform agendas.
 
Diogenes said:
Indeed.

BTW, here's some additional info:

Yes, abolitionist frameworks—particularly those focused on prisons and policing—explicitly aim to eliminate those institutions rather than reform them.


These frameworks treat police and prisons as illegitimate or irredeemable systems that reproduce harm, racial hierarchy, and social control. The goal is not better training, body cameras, or reduced sentences, but the end of the institutions themselves, replaced by alternative forms of accountability and safety.


Core Ideas​


Abolitionists distinguish their project from reform:


  • Reform accepts the existence of police and prisons and tries to make them fairer or less lethal.
  • Abolition rejects the premise that these institutions can ever be just or effective at producing safety. It views them as outgrowths of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism that manage surplus populations and enforce inequality.

Central concepts include:


  • The prison-industrial complex (or carceral state): prisons and policing as interconnected systems of profit, labor control, and racial domination rather than neutral responses to crime.
  • Non-reformist reforms: changes that shrink the system’s power and capacity rather than expand or legitimize it (e.g., closing jails rather than building “nicer” ones).
  • Transformative justice and restorative justice: community-based processes that address harm without relying on the state to punish. These emphasize healing for survivors, accountability for people who cause harm, and changing the conditions that produce violence.
  • Focus on root causes: poverty, housing instability, mental health crises, lack of education and jobs, and systemic racism. Abolitionists argue that addressing these reduces the need for coercive institutions.

Intellectual and Organizational Roots​


Key sources and figures include:


  • Angela Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) and her broader work arguing that prisons are a modern continuation of slavery and racial control.
  • Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s analysis of “organized abandonment” and the political economy of incarceration (Golden Gulag).
  • Mariame Kaba and organizations such as Critical Resistance, which popularized the slogan “We don’t need more police; we need fewer prisons.”
  • Earlier Black radical, anarchist, and feminist traditions, including the 1970s prison movement, the Attica uprising, and critiques of the carceral state by scholars in critical race theory and abolition feminism.

The framework gained mainstream visibility after the 2020 protests following George Floyd’s death. Slogans such as “Abolish the police,” “Defund the police,” and “Police free futures” circulated widely. Some advocates treated “defund” as a transitional demand toward full abolition; others used it more modestly to mean shifting budgets toward social services.


Stated Goals and Alternatives​


Explicit goals commonly include:


  • Eliminating prisons and jails as sites of confinement.
  • Dismantling police departments as currently constituted.
  • Ending cash bail, solitary confinement, and other practices seen as inherent to the system.
  • Building parallel systems of community safety: violence interrupters, mental-health response teams, housing-first approaches, transformative justice circles, and mutual aid networks.

Proponents argue that most social harms (poverty-related property crime, interpersonal violence rooted in trauma, mental-health crises) are better addressed outside the criminal legal system. They point to data showing high rates of recidivism, the limited deterrent effect of incarceration for many offenses, and the disproportionate impact on Black and poor communities.


Variations Within the Framework​


Not every person or group who uses abolitionist language holds identical views:


  • Some are absolute: no police, no prisons, under any circumstances.
  • Others are more gradualist or strategic: reduce the footprint of the carceral state dramatically while building alternatives, accepting limited coercive capacity for the most serious interpersonal violence in the interim.
  • Some focus primarily on prisons; others treat policing and prisons as inseparable.
  • There are overlaps with broader left projects (anti-capitalism, decolonization, anti-racism) and occasional tensions with more conventional progressive reform agendas.
Click to expand...
Praise the lord and pass the ammo!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top