In the United States (the prison capital of the world), prisons are nothing more than the spiritual successor to slavery in all but name. They are a racist institution in a country that was openly founded on colonialism and genocide.
"But whatabout the really bad™ people???"
See the post, and also CW: Reality. Donald The Fucking Nazi Rapist Trump is a free man, and he will always be a free man, and if he does see "prison," it will be all for show in some country club "prison," not with the rest of us normies. Joseph Biden has more blood on his hands than the worst serial killer in history, and he's the fucking president! And he's also got a protective circle of brainwashed individuals defending him!
You think really bad™ people go to prison? Only if they're also part of a marginalized group. The prison system was never intended to address actual injustice, unless that "injustice" is one of the things referenced in the post.
We used to have them. They eventually became a catch-all for people ranging from those who would eat someone's face off to those that were slutty or gay. They'd get lobotomized and screwed up.
Then we decommissioned those because they were too cruel, so we then let people wander the streets, barefoot in the snowy winter until they died of exposure or self-medicated with fentanyl cut with Tranq and lost limbs. Then we determined that that was also too cruel, so now they sometimes go to prison or sometimes go on the streets, where people step over their dying bodies and say "they have a right to live on the streets and have bare feet in winter". Some commit petty crimes just to have the warmth and safety of a shelter in a jail vs the elements.
We swing from one extreme to the other, but there's a middle ground we have not explored yet. But it requires social workers, mandatory drug rehab, universal healthcare, free or subsidized education, public housing, and permanent beds in hospitals for mental health problems. With a few hospitals for those that are too dangerous to rejoin society fully, but with safeguards in place. All that requires commitment, majority voting, and taxpayer money, so most people just shrug and tell them to fend for themselves even if the most vulnerable want help and a better life.
We have come a long way from some of the savage and cruel punishments we did to people in the middle ages and older (see some of the European crime and punishment museums, people were inventive to say the least). But American prisons seem to fall short in many regards, too. I believe we can do better if we actually put our minds to it.
This is still a step up from the people who cast judgment on them, and the people who would displace them (NIMBYs). And there are a lot of groups that work to provide things like food, tents, and warm sleeping bags, but the system frequently responds with violence, with cities passing ordinances against them, and police cruelly breaking them down.
This post is about how we need to abolish them entirely. Saying American prisons "fall short" seems really dismissive of how deliberately cruel they are, and how they are racist institutions used to subjugate and enslave.
Yes, by abolishing prisons and the police