Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 18 - What Success Looks Like

  • from Part IV - The Road to Recovery
  • Jeffrey Bellin
  • Book:
    Mass Incarceration Nation
    Published online:
    03 November 2022
    Print publication:
    17 November 2022, pp 165-169

  • Summary

    While there is broad agreement that this country incarcerates too many people, there is a distressing lack of clarity about how to address the problem. At one end of the spectrum are “abolitionists,” who view American criminal law enforcement, like slavery, as an illegitimate institution that can only be abolished, not reformed. Broadly speaking, abolitionists want to get rid of prisons, defund the police, and adopt noncoercive strategies to deal with crime. Or, as Woods Ervin, an organizer with Critical Resistance, a prominent abolitionist organization, explains, “abolition is a political vision with a goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.”1 Abolitionists contrast their approach with that of “reformers.” Reformers view the criminal justice system with more optimism or, at least, as a necessary evil. They seek changes to, not the elimination of, existing law enforcement architecture. Abolitionists think reformers are too timid. Reformers think abolitionists are impractical.