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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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one thing I am convinced of is that we can invent a non-torturous way of removing someone from society to protect people from them. The fact that a serial killer's rights are restricted and they're not allowed to leave a building doesn't mean our post-abolition institution includes all the other things that are wrong with modern prisons.
Is it post-abolition if you're restricting someone's rights and confining them to a building, even if you do so in the most humane possible way?
I would say no. I think it does us no favors to talk in terms of abolition and then describe what is at bottom a very nice prison.
yes, if we dismantle the current system whatever is built after is post-abolition.
if you have a repeat serial offender you have to restrain them, kill them, or let them hurt people. One or two of those are obviously not acceptable, so are you going to have capital punishment or are you going to figure out a way to separate someone from their victim pool in a humane way that doesn't carry the baggage of institutional racism etc?
abolition doesn't mean you never have custody of someone, it means the current carceral system is abolished.
Calling that "abolition" strikes me as a really poor way to communicate a good idea, especially in an environment where one of the main criticisms of AES states is "this is just a dictatorship with red aesthetics." You immediately have to explain to people that you don't mean abolish abolish, and it will feel like a bait-and-switch. I think a lot of self-described abolitionists would strongly disagree with defining abolition that way, too.
When people talk about abolishing the death penalty, they don't mean making executions fair and humane, they mean no more executions. Same for abolishing slavery: see all the leftist criticism of the 13th amendment's carve out for prisons. We should either mean it or say something more precise.
take it up with people active in the movement.
"'feminism' poorly communicates equality" type analysis
You're telling me your idea of prison abolition involves building nicer prisons. You really don't see how that's going to confuse people?
i agree with this, i think justice for the victims (if any) would necessitate at least moving the perpetrator out of the town/ area where things happened. In a society where housing was a right, something like indefinite house arrest with occasional parole review would be an appropriate ‘strictest’ level of punishment. Every existing prison needs to be torn down though
House arrest requires monitoring. You can't just have every violent criminal on house arrest. That's not a practical goal.
There are also the questions of what you do if they leave, and what you do if they leave and commit another serious crime.
there's a lot of logistical problems in preventing people from having the opportunity to re-offend and whatever the solution is we need to not create systems where staff or admin abuse of their wards or of the inmates harming one another freely