“Is Prison Abolitionism Self-Defeating?”

The question in the title of this post is the title of this new essay authored by Youngjae Lee and now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

This Essay argues that prison abolitionism is self-defeating in three ways.  First, putting pressure on the basic criminal justice model and seeking to eliminate it may increase the impetus to resort to alternative modes of preventing harm that focus on prediction and prevention, as opposed to a system of notice followed by punitive consequences in response to conduct in willful violation of rules.  As a result, we may end up fueling a system that is even more liberty-restricting than a system that is premised on the idea of choice and consequences.  Second, operating the kind of vast network of robust social services that abolitionists typically favor as an alternative to prisons requires rules administered through institutions and personnel, and enforcing the rules and protecting the administrative apparatus from abuse, fraud, and sabotage may require threats of unpleasant consequences, including imprisonment.  By committing to a future without prisons, abolitionists may be making unavailable an important tool that can help bring about the world in which important primary goods are provided by the public sector.  Third, prison abolitionism’s tendency to deemphasize individual responsibility and describe undesirable behavior as a byproduct of impoverished social conditions brought about at least in part by injustice may bring us closer to a world in which the picture of humans as autonomous beings deserving of dignity is replaced with the picture of humans as potential carriers of risk who need to be shaped, managed, treated, and even institutionalized in advance if necessary.