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The aim of the prison abolition movement is to eliminate prisons, jails, immigration detention centers, and prisoner of war camps by alternatives which they argue are more useful and more humane. Prison abolitionists present a broad critique of the criminal justice system in the West, which they feel is racist, classist, and ineffectual at reforming criminals, decreasing crime, or reconciling the victims of crime. Many people involved in the prison abolition movement are also involved in struggles against other forms of social control and oppression, such as the institutionalization of the insane.

Contents 1 Advocates for prison abolition 2 Prison reforms and alternatives 2.1 Anarchist view 3 Arguments for prison abolition 4 See also 4.1 List of organizations supporting prison abolition 4.2 List of other relevant organizations 4.3 Relevant topics 5 External links

Historically, Quakers were among the first advocates for alternatives to prison.

Anarchist groups such as Anarchist Black Cross have played a significant part in the prison abolition movement and this trend continues today. Anarchists wish to eliminate all forms of state control, of which imprisonment is one of its more obvious examples. Anarchists also oppose prisons because they house non-violent offenders (e.g., thieves and swindlers instead of just murderers and rapists), incarcerate mainly poor people or people of color, and do not generally rehabilitate criminals, in many cases making them worse. As a result, the prison abolition movement often is associated with anarchism and anti-authoritarianism.

Proposals for prison reform and proposed alternatives to prisons differ significantly depending on the political beliefs behind them. Proposals and tactics often include:

• Penal system reforms:
  • Substituting incarceration with supervised release, probation, restitution to victims, or community work.
  • Decreasing terms of imprisonment by abolishing mandatory minimum sentencing
  • Decreasing ethnic disparity in prison populations
• Prison condition reforms
• Crime prevention rather than punishment
• Abolition of specific programs which increase prison population, such as the prohibition of drugs (e.g. War on Drugs), gun control, prohibition of prostitution, and alcohol restrictions.
• Education programs to inform people who have never been in prison about the problems
• Fighting individual cases of wrongful conviction

In place of prisons, anarchism proposes community-controlled courts, councils, or assemblies to control the problem of social crime. They argue that with the destruction of capitalism, and the self-management of production by workers and communities, property crimes would largely vanish.

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• Prisons are less effective at discouraging crimes and/or compensating victims than other forms of punishment.^[1]
• In the United States of America, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution did not abolish slavery, but limited it to cases where it is a "punishment for a crime". In some countries prisons are nothing more than institutionalized slavery.
• Judicial outcome depends on the financial resources of the accused.
• Laws are biased towards profiting one segment of the population over another. For example, in most countries tobacco is legal, while marijuana is not, because large corporations control the former, while the latter is not currently taxed.
• Prisons alienate people from their communities.
• In the U.S., people of color and from the lower class are much more likely to be imprisoned than people of European descent or people who are wealthy. ^[2]
• People who are put in prison for poverty crimes, such as stealing food or prostitution, find it much harder to find legal work once convicted of a crime, and thus get pulled back into the prison system, giving them no other options or resources to use to support themselves and/or their families. Many prison abolitionists argue that we should "legalize survival" and provide help to those who need it instead of making it even harder to find work and perpetuating the non-violent crimes.
• Prisons are not proven to make people less violent; in fact, often they promote violence in individuals by surrounding them with other violent criminals and providing them no means of love, care and emotional support.^{[citation needed]}

• Anarchist Black Cross
• Anarchist Prisoners' Legal Aid Network
• Critical Resistance
• Justice Now
• Socialist Party USA
• Massachusetts Statewide Harm Reduction Coaltion (SHaRC)
• Prison Activist Resource Center (PARC)
• JusticeAction Australia

• American Civil Liberties Union
• American Friends Service Committee
• Books to Prisoners
• Families Against Mandatory Minimums
• NAACP
• November Coalition

• Angela Davis
• incarceration
• judicial system
• prison reform
• prison
• prison education
• prison labor
• prisoner of war
• private prison
• probation

• Prison abolition & alternatives
• ZNet article on Prison Abolition
• Prison Abolition pamphlet
• Radical Alternatives to Prison
• Howard League for Penal Reform
• Article calling for abolition of prisons by conservative author Gary North
• IWW General Defense Committee