# data[].attributes.body
governments became addicted to revenue from these fees and fines. (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For Black and brown Americans, the prison system in the United States is ripe with false incarcerations and oppressive sentences.

This system cannot be fair, and should be abolished. While this may seem impossible, it is important to think big in order to reshape society.

Instead, we should create a system that focuses on rehabilitation and restorative justice.

Ashish Prashar is the Sr. Director of Global Communications for Publicis Sapient.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Imagine a world without prisons. Go on, imagine it. Think beyond reform and towards fundamental change.

Prison abolitionists, like Angela Davis, ask people to enlarge their field of vision in order to advance big changes. So rather than focusing on the problems of the institution and asking what needs to be changed about that institution, people can raise radical questions about the organization of the larger society and the very existence of institutions.

For millions of Black and brown Americans, this radical imagination is urgent and necessary. Prison has been a blight on their lives for generations, reaching back to the 13th Amendment, which freed their enslaved ancestors in the 19th century but provided a loophole, making room for authorities to work around the abolition of slavery and giving birth to mass incarceration.

The work of abolitionists is to reveal the fundamental problems with the prison system and imagine a different society. This means the end of incarceration. This means funding community resources that prevent harm, and empowering systems that allow for equitable accountability. This means invalidating the very premise of the carceral system, and instead building a world where prisons don't have to exist at all.

The US has just started on the path to abolition and advocates know that prisons won't be bulldozed tomorrow.

But in the meantime, people will continue to confront the criminal justice system and face incarceration.So abolitionists are calling for a fundamental shift in thinking, approach, and design of the justice system predicated on restoration and healing. Instead of beginning with punishment, we begin with care.

Redesign for care

In a system designed for care, the restriction of personal liberty is the punishment. Remove no other rights. Therefore, life inside prison must resemble the best version of life outside, and prisoners should serve their sentence at the lowest possible security level. Any deviation from this requires a compelling reason. Justification is required to deny a person their rights, not to grant them.

The more institutionalized a system, the harder it is for incarcerated people to thrive when released. Therefore, instead of keeping people in stasis, let's design a journey of ever-expanding freedoms, so when the sentence ends, inmates can step back fully into freedom.

No further sentence, written or unwritten, should be imposed exceeding the loss of liberty. This includes the withholding of medical treatment, privacy, food and water, solitary confinement, or any other abuse. In practice, this means providing critical non-security services to incarcerated people using local and municipal - non-correctional - service providers.

Prisons do not have staff for medical, education, employment, clerical, or library services; these are imported from the local community and overseen by local governments. Incarcerated people also have normal contact with community members and organizations while in prison.

As a result, continuation of care and services after release can be easy, while community perceptions of incarcerated people will improve - enabling their reintegration. In this system, once a sentence is served, the debt to society is paid: previously incarcerated people can move freely, without prejudice.

How do we reduce the prison population in the US?

About 40% of the incarcerated population doesn't present a public safety concern, according to a 2016 report from the Brennan Center for Justice. If we commit to a restorative system instead of a punitive one, there is opportunity for fundamental change and community-based alternatives to incarceration and detention.

Let's begin with three policies already in play, which fully embraced could redefine criminal justice: restorative justice, misdemeanor reform, and legislation that would eliminate punishment for parole violations.

Restorative justice, not punitive justice

Restorative justice focuses on the relationship between the offender and the victim and centers the survivors' needs in ways the traditional court system does not.

The paradigm shifts from the three questions posed in the criminal justice system: what law was broken; who broke it; and how do we punish them?...to a different set of questions when using a restorative justice approach: who was harmed; what does she/he need; and whose obligation is it to meet those needs?

This process looks more deeply at the impact of violence on a multiplicity of relationships, including primarily the survivor, but also others in the family and surrounding communities. It can promote a deeper sense of accountability to all those who have been harmed, with the dual goals of healing wounds and preventing future acts of violence.

Youth courts use programs like these, such as the Red Hook Community Justice Center, Harlem Community Justice Center and the Impact Justice's Restorative Justice Project. The work interrupts the cycle of offending, repairs harm caused to the victim and the community and incorporates restorative healing circles.

Restorative programs have higher survivor satisfaction rates than punitive systems. Programs like Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion in Seattle are also important. The program joins civilians with police to divert offenders to needed resources without making an arrest.

Misdemeanor reforms

Misdemeanors vary in severity from jaywalking to unpaid parking tickets to third-degree assault. While the latter may need stronger consequences, facing jail time for not being able to pay a moving violation or jaywalking isn't just. Attaching monetary penalties to these sorts of minor misdemeanors have made the US criminal justice system into a profit center rather than a source of justice.

Minor infractions now make up 80% of state criminal dockets putting throngs of people in US jails and prisons and the opaque nature of the courts make it so it's hard to fully grasp the size of the problem. But it's clear that local governments have become addicted to the revenue from these fees and fines, which are sticking some of the most vulnerable members of society with heavy financial burdens.

This isn't to say the system should completely eliminate misdemeanor sanctions, but enforce appropriate consequences for offenses rather than disproportionate punishments.

Don't arrest for parole violations

Passing legislation that would eliminate parole violations would go a long way toward keeping people out of prisons and jails.

New York City's Less is More Act is an example. The act, if passed, would eliminate technical parole violations, like missing a curfew or failing a drug test. The state's taxpayers spent millions of dollars last year incarcerating people for technical parole violations. New York wouldn't be alone in this. After South Carolina adopted sanctions - which included disciplinary actions outside of incarceration - violations decreased and recidivism dropped.

Committing to restorative justice, implementing these reforms and other changes will focus the justice system on the principle of care.

Do not stop at the prison walls

We need people to recognize you can't spend $80 billion a year on making things worse, not better, and have a society that functions. We can't stop at the prison walls. Abolitionist strategies teach us that our visions of the future can radically depart from what exists in the here and now. We need to create space for budgets to be divested from police and prisons and invested directly into communities to address mental health needs, homelessness, access to critical education, and rewarding jobs as well as community-based methods of accountability.

The Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic have taught us that we're all in this together, allowing us to explore building a new care-based reality. People are flexing their visionary skills and imagination, something we're often kept from in our society.

We need a vision of a better society: a future grounded in love, justice, accountability, a future grounded in safety and good health, a future grounded in meeting the needs of the people - with not a prison in sight.
Ashish Prashar is a justice reform campaigner, who sits on the Board of Exodus Transitional Community, Getting Out and Staying Out, Leap Confronting Conflict and the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice and is a fellow at the Royal Society of Arts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We need to abolish America's prison system. Here's how we can do it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For Black and brown Americans, the prison system in the United States is ripe with false incarcerations and oppressive sentences. This system cannot be fair, and should be abolished. While this may seem impossible, it is important to think big in order to reshape society.

# data[].attributes.body
Black and Browns Americans haven been incarcerated at high numbers since slavery (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
Abolitions want people to change we think about crime and punishment. They want to focus on restoration and healing (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
People who have been convicted of a crime should still have their rights, and prison doesn't give them those rights (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
It's hard those who come out of prison to reenter society (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
Prisoners don't get medical treatment, food, water, privacy while incarcerated (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
Solitary confinement (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
It gets ride of correctional officers and replaces them with local community members (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
The goal is once they pay their debt, their freedoms return without judgement from others (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
40% of people in prison are not a public threat (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
Restorative justice focuses on the relationshio between the defendant and victim, which focuses on the survivors needs (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
"The paradigm shifts from the three questions posed in the criminal justice system: what law was broken; who broke it; and how do we punish them?...to a different set of questions when using a restorative justice approach: who was harmed; what does she/he need; and whose obligation is it to meet those needs?" (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
It creates a sense of accountability that supposed to heal and stop future acts of violence (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
They have some programs in place for minors (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
this makes most of the prisoners vulnerable and have heavy financial burdens (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
implementing reforms and other changes would focus more the justice system on the principle of care (Source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
The United States has incredibly high incarceration rates. While 0.7% of population may not seem very high, this is about 1 out of 150 people. about 2.3 ( source 1)

# data[].attributes.body
confinements of people who have held in custody by judicial authorities by following a conviction of crime(s) (source 2)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Prison, an institution for the confinement of persons who have been remanded (held) in custody by a judicial authority or who have been deprived of their liberty following conviction for a crime. A person found guilty of a felony or a misdemeanour may be required to serve a prison sentence. The holding of accused persons awaiting trial remains an important function of contemporary prisons, and in some countries such persons constitute the majority of the prison population. In the United Kingdom, for example, generally about one-fifth of the prison population is unconvicted or unsentenced, while more than two-thirds of those in custody in India are pretrial detainees.

prison© Steve Helber-AP/REX/Shutterstock.com

Until the late 18th century, prisons were used primarily for the confinement of debtors, persons accused of crimes and awaiting trial, and convicts awaiting the imposition of their sentences-usually death or transportation ( deportation) overseas. A sentence of imprisonment was rarely imposed-and then only for minor crimes.

As the use of capital punishment began to decline in the late 18th century, the prison was increasingly used by courts as a place of punishment, eventually becoming the chief means of punishing serious offenders. The use of imprisonment subsequently spread worldwide, often by means of colonial empires that brought the practice to countries with no indigenous concept of prisons. By the early 21st century a majority of countries had abolished the death penalty (in law or in practice), and imprisonment was consequently the most severe form of punishment their courts could impose.

Development of the prison system

During the 16th century a number of houses of correction were established in Europe for the rehabilitation of minor offenders and vagrants; they emphasized strict discipline and hard labour. Over time, imprisonment came to be accepted as an appropriate method of punishing convicted criminals. Poor sanitation in these institutions caused widespread disease among prisoners, who were generally held unsegregated, without any consideration for gender or legal status. Outbreaks of epidemic typhus, known as "jail fever," occasionally killed not only prisoners but also jailers and (more rarely) judges and lawyers involved in trials. The modern prison developed in the late 18th century in part as a reaction to the conditions of the local jails of the time.

Courtesy of the trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum; photograph, Geremy Butler

Emergence of the penitentiary

The concept of the prison as a penitentiary (that is, as a place of punishment and personal reform) was advocated in this period by the English jurist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham, among others. The appalling conditions and official corruption in many local prisons of late 18th-century England and Wales were exposed by the English prison reformer John Howard, whose works The State of the Prisons in England and Wales (1777) and An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe (1789) were based on extensive travels. The public outrage that Bentham and Howard helped generate led to a national system of inspection and the construction of "convict prisons" for those serving longer sentences. Consequently, in the early 19th century, penitentiaries were established in the U.S. states of Pennsylvania and New York.

Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

As use of the new type of prison expanded, administrators began to experiment with new methods of prisoner rehabilitation. Solitary confinement of criminals came to be viewed as an ideal, because it was thought that solitude would help the offender to become penitent and that penitence would result in rehabilitation. In the United States the idea was first implemented at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia in 1829. Each prisoner remained in his cell or its adjoining yard, worked alone at trades such as weaving, carpentry, or shoemaking, and saw no one except the officers of the institution and an occasional visitor from outside. This method of prison management, known as the "separate system" or the " Pennsylvania system," became a model for penal institutions constructed in several other U.S. states and throughout much of Europe.

A competing philosophy of prison management, known as the "silent system" or the " Auburn system," arose at roughly the same time. Although constant silence was strictly enforced, the distinguishing feature of this system was that prisoners were permitted to work together in the daytime (at night they were confined to individual cells). Both systems held to the basic premise that contact between convicts should be prohibited in order to minimize the bad influence inmates might have on one another. Vigorous competition between supporters of the two systems followed until about 1850, by which time most U.S. states had adopted the silent system.

The concept of personal reform became increasingly important in penology, resulting in experimentation with various methods. One example was the mark system, which was developed about 1840 by Capt. Alexander Maconochie at Norfolk Island, an English penal colony east of Australia. Instead of serving fixed sentences, prisoners were required to earn credits, or "marks," in amounts proportional to the seriousness of their offenses. Credits were accumulated through good conduct, hard work, and study, and they could be withheld or subtracted for indolence or misbehaviour. Prisoners who obtained the required number of credits became eligible for release. The mark system presaged the use of indeterminate sentences, individualized treatment, and parole. Above all it emphasized training and performance, rather than solitude, as the chief mechanisms of reform.

Photographic Library of Australia

Further refinements in the mark system were developed in the mid-19th century by Sir Walter Crofton, the director of Irish prisons. In his program, known as the Irish system, prisoners progressed through three stages of confinement before they were returned to civilian life. The first portion of the sentence was served in isolation. After that, prisoners were assigned to group work projects. Finally, for six months or more before release, the prisoners were transferred to "intermediate prisons," where they were supervised by unarmed guards and given sufficient freedom and responsibility to demonstrate their fitness for release. Release nonetheless depended upon the continued good conduct of the offender, who could be returned to prison if necessary.

Many features of the Irish system were adopted by reformatories constructed in the United States in the late 19th century for the treatment of youthful and first offenders. The leaders of the reformatory movement advocated the classification and segregation of various types of prisoners, individualized treatment emphasizing vocational education and industrial employment, indeterminate sentences and rewards for good behaviour, and parole or conditional release. The reformatory philosophy gradually permeated the entire U.S. prison system, and the American innovations, in combination with the Irish system, had great impact upon European prison practices, leading to innovations such as the Borstal system of rehabilitation for youthful offenders in the 20th century.

The purpose of imprisonment

There are a number of accepted reasons for the use of imprisonment. One approach aims to deter those who would otherwise commit crimes (general deterrence) and to make it less likely that those who serve a prison sentence will commit crimes after their release (individual deterrence). A second approach focuses on issuing punishment to, or obtaining retribution from, those who have committed serious crimes. A third approach encourages the personal reform of those who are sent to prison. Finally, in some cases it is necessary to protect the public from those who commit crimes-particularly from those who do so persistently. In individual cases, all or some of these justifications may apply. The increasing importance of the notion of reform has led some prison systems to be called correctional institutions.

This description of imprisonment applies mainly to the countries of Europe and North America. In China imprisonment was historically used as a means of reforming the minds of criminals, and it obliged prisoners to work in support of the state. Imprisonment in the Soviet Union similarly became a method of forcing so-called enemies of the state to labour on its behalf and, in so doing, to recognize the error of their ways. Developing countries faced a different challenge as they confronted prison systems that in many cases symbolized a legacy of colonial domination. Given the difficulty of replacing the structure and organization of an existing prison system, many countries consequently struggled to implement effective forms of punishment that were also decent and humane.

key people

related topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Prison, an institution for the confinement of persons who have been remanded (held) in custody by a judicial authority or who have been deprived of their liberty following conviction for a crime. The holding of accused persons awaiting trial is an important function of contemporary prisons.

# data[].attributes.body
People who are for abolishing prisons say that the system is racist at its core and based only on punishment or revenge (Source 3)

# data[].attributes.body
There are 3 ideas about the purpose of prison: to deter people from commiting crimes, to punish people who cmmit crimes, and to rehabilitate people who commit crimes (Source 2)

# data[].attributes.body
According Bill Keller, "Most of those who rally to the cause [of prison abolition] do not advocate a world where no one answers your 911 call or serial killers are set loose...The real debate is what should replace the current institutions" (Source 3).

# data[].attributes.body
There could still be police but not as many and they would play a different role (Source 3).

# data[].attributes.body
According to Serraes, "Prisons have become “catch-all solutions” for a variety of social problems such as poverty, mental illness, addiction, and violence; however, prisons don’t actually solve these problems" (Source 4).

# data[].attributes.body
Neighborhoods could use nonprofit networks to combat violence and help prisoners reenter society, while also reduce inequalities that lead to crime (Source 3).

# data[].attributes.body
The criminal system can do harm like break families, derail careers, and break up communities ( Source 3)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Five years ago, when the activist and cable TV host Van Jones launched the #cut50 campaign to reduce U.S. prison populations by half, many mainstream justice reform watchers rolled their eyes at what seemed to be a reckless overreach. (My own eye-roll is here.) Now the campaign has attracted an A-list of celebrities, philanthropists and candidates pursuing the Democratic presidential nomination. These days, when Jones gets pilloried, it's as likely to be for being too compromising: Why stop short of #cut100?

People who follow criminal justice policy for a living say the fastest growing subset of the reform movement consists of abolitionists who say a system that is inherently racist and based on retribution should be pulled up by the roots. Not just prisons and jails, but most of the institutions of law enforcement and criminal justice.

"Abolition has become a rallying cry for the progressive wing of the justice reform movement," Jeremy Travis told me. "NO NEW JAILS. NO MORE MONEY FOR POLICE. ABOLISH ICE. ABOLISH PRISONS." Travis, who oversees criminal justice issues for the Arnold Ventures philanthropy, has spent a career in the system, most recently as president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. (Disclosure: Laura and John Arnold, the founders of Arnold Ventures, are donors to The Marshall Project, my former employer.) "There is lots of energy behind this reframing of the 'reform' agenda," Travis said.

Prison abolition has decades of antecedents, led by once-fringe figures like Angela Davis, the 1960s communist firebrand, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, the subject in April of a sympathetic profile in the New York Times Magazine. More recently abolition has been embraced by younger Americans who grew up after violent crime peaked in the early 1990s, and has helped kindle some fundamental rethinking in the mainstream.

Like other radical ideas-Medicare for All, the Green New Deal-abolition means different things to different people. Most of those who rally to the cause do not advocate a world where no one answers your 911 call and serial killers are set loose. Abolition is an ideal-like, say, "repeal and replace." The real debate is what should replace the current institutions.

"There is always going to be some role for prisons, but maybe 10 percent of what we do now," said Martin Horn, a former New York State parole director, now a professor at John Jay. "I think we need police. We may not need as many as we now have, and we want to use them differently."

Abolitionists generally start the conversation with two immense objectives. The first is devolving responsibility for public safety to local communities. ("Civilianizing safety," some experts call it.) One reason New York City has reduced its crime rate while simultaneously slashing arrests, incarceration and law-enforcement overreach is that the city has a nonprofit network on the ground, some of it subsidized by the city, to combat violence and to help the formerly incarcerated safely reenter society. Abolitionists' other aim is to redistribute government spending from police and prisons to narrowing the underlying, crime-breeding inequalities of wealth and opportunity. They would instead invest in housing, education, jobs and health-a goal that seems remote in the current political environment.

What is new, says Elizabeth Glazer, director of New York City's criminal justice office, is that many of the ideas that animate the abolitionists "are now finding their way into established criminal justice structures"-not just scholars and activists but also prosecutors questioning what crimes should be prosecuted and judges seeking out-of-court remedies.

Glazer attributes the shift to an awareness, coming in part from the testimony of formerly incarcerated men and women, that "the criminal justice system can do harm" as well as enhance safety. It can break families, derail careers and demolish community cohesion. New York's experience seems to demonstrate the rewards of a lighter touch: People who do not accumulate arrest records and jail time are more likely to stay employed, in families and out of trouble.

To reformists who work in or with the system, the abolitionists can be exasperating-a case of the ideal being the enemy of the good. DeAnna Hoskins, president of JustLeadershipUSA, which mobilizes former prisoners to press for reform, points to the campaign that persuaded New York to close the jail complex on Rikers Island. The plan depends on building smaller, more humane jails in four boroughs to house a much-reduced population of prisoners. Along with the inevitable resistance of prospective new neighbors, the city now faces vocal opposition from abolitionists who object to any new jails on principle.

"That's just not realistic," Hoskins said. "We're not going to close Rikers on Monday and not have any type of detainment." She added, "When we talk about abolishing prisons and abolishing law enforcement, it's actually reducing the power and the reach of those entities."

One of the liveliest abolition debates concerns parole and probation, which get less attention than incarceration but regulate the lives of 4.5 million Americans, twice as many as are confined in prisons and jails. Because a parolee can be returned to prison for a technical infraction such as a missed appointment or a trace of drugs in a urine sample, the parole-to-prison pipeline is a major feeder of mass incarceration. Vincent Schiraldi, the co-director of the Columbia University Justice Lab, ran the New York City probation department when Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, was mayor. Schiraldi estimates that the borough of Manhattan alone spends roughly $16 million a year for supervision of ex-offenders.

"If probation didn't exist, who would spend that $16 million inventing probation?" he asked. "Who would spend that $16 million to hire a bunch of people-with guns and badges and civil service protections-to drive in every day from Queens and Long Island to help those people, who mostly live in Harlem, learn how to live in Harlem?"

Experts have proposed a range of replacements for the supervisory bureaucracy. One option, already practiced in New York City for parolees regarded as less risky, is to replace parole officers with ATM-like kiosks that scan fingerprints. Check in once a month, answer a few questions on a computer screen and get on with your life. Schiraldi's version of abolition favors a more human approach: outsourcing supervision to organizations that would be paid to help the formerly incarcerated navigate the outside world.

Years ago, when he was running Pennsylvania's corrections department, Horn offered an even more radical suggestion: give parolees vouchers they can use to buy education, housing, drug treatment or other services and let them decide what help they need to reenter society. These are services the current bureaucracy performs poorly, if at all. Horn concedes that to prepare prisoners for such an independent life would require transforming prisons into prep schools, devoted to graduating people with marketable skills and control of their demons, especially addiction.

Although polling is scarce, it's a fair bet that "abolition" is not a voter magnet. The electorate may want the system to be less cruel and more rehabilitative, but voters also want a professional answering that 911 call when their kid gets shot-and not a member of neighborhood watch. The bipartisan coalition that has found common ground on criminal justice would be severely strained by such a lurch to the left. The conservative attack ads write themselves.

But in recent years, with crime near historic lows, the iniquities and unintended consequences of American punishment have so captured public concern that even President Donald Trump coughs up an occasional platitude about "giving our fellow citizens a chance at redemption." There is a place for higher aspirations, if only to keep moving the middle. Closing Rikers was a radical idea, until it wasn't. The #cut50 campaign was mocked as unrealistic until people realized that it was essentially restoring incarceration to 1980s levels.

"I don't think that in my lifetime we'll ever abolish prisons, but it's a really important question, why we put people in prisons," said Travis, adding that the abolition debate is "a healthy tension that is really challenging the pace of reform and the status quo."

To paraphrase Robert Browning, a movement's reach should exceed its grasp, or what's a heaven for?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Five years ago, when the activist and cable TV host Van Jones launched the #cut50 campaign to reduce U.S. prison populations by half, many mainstream justice reform watchers rolled their eyes at what seemed to be a reckless overreach. (My own eye-roll is here.)

# data[].attributes.body
people found guilty of a misdemeanor and felonies are automatically sentenced to a jail time. (source 2)

# data[].attributes.body
According to Serraes, "prisons, as they currently operate, are not designed to rehabilitate or help the people inside. Rather, jails and prisons often create more harm. The conditions of many prisons within the United States, and in the South in particular, are unlivable. The Department of Corrections forces incarcerated people to live in inhumane conditions that include: structural issues, flooding, inedible/expired food, overcrowding, mass illness...and near nonexistent rehabilitative and counseling programming" (Source 4).

# data[].attributes.body
According to Serraes, people from comunities of color and lower-class communities are arrested and incarcerated at disproportionate rates than white and/or upper class people. (Source 4).

# data[].attributes.body
The prison system creates a cycle of inequality based on racism and classism (Source 4).