How Worldwide Movements For Prison Abolition Reimagine Community Safety

The world incarcerates approximately 11.5 million people at any given time (World Prison Brief, 2024). The rates vary enormously:

- United States: 531 per 100,000 (down from a peak of 756 in 2008, still the highest of any large democracy) - El Salvador: 605 per 100,000 (following President Bukele's mass incarceration campaign) - Rwanda: 580 per 100,000 - Brazil: 381 per 100,000 - United Kingdom: 131 per 100,000 - Germany: 69 per 100,000 - Japan: 37 per 100,000 - Norway: 54 per 100,000 - Finland: 50 per 100,000

The correlation between incarceration rate and public safety is weak to nonexistent. Japan and the Nordic countries, with the lowest incarceration rates, have the lowest crime rates. The United States and El Salvador, with the highest incarceration rates, have among the highest rates of violent crime in their respective regions.

---

Prison abolition is widely misunderstood as the naïve belief that you can simply open all the doors and walk away. The actual position is more rigorous.

Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Mariame Kaba — the intellectual architects of contemporary abolition — argue for a structural transformation: dismantling the prison system while simultaneously building the institutions that make it unnecessary.

Abolition is a horizon, not an event. It's the long-term project of creating communities where prisons are not needed, not the overnight elimination of all confinement. The practical steps include:

1. Decriminalize poverty. A significant portion of incarcerated people are there for offenses directly related to poverty: theft of food or necessities, inability to pay fines, homelessness criminalized through anti-camping laws, low-level drug offenses driven by untreated addiction. Addressing poverty reduces these "crimes" at the source.

2. Decriminalize addiction. Portugal decriminalized all drug use in 2001 and invested in treatment instead. The results: drug-related deaths decreased, HIV infections among drug users dropped by 95%, and drug use rates remained comparable to or lower than European averages. The sky did not fall.

3. Invest in mental health. An estimated 37% of people in state prisons and 44% in local jails have a diagnosed mental health condition (Bureau of Justice Statistics). For many, prison is the mental health system of last resort — the most expensive and least effective possible intervention. Community mental health services, crisis intervention teams, and supported housing are more effective and cheaper.

4. Implement restorative justice. For offenses involving interpersonal harm, restorative justice brings together the person who caused harm, the person harmed, and community members to address the harm, determine accountability, and agree on repair. Meta-analyses show that restorative justice reduces reoffending by 14-27% compared to conventional criminal justice (Sherman & Strang, 2007).

5. Transform conditions for the remainder. For the small percentage of people who currently require confinement because they pose an immediate danger to others, the model should be Norwegian-style rehabilitation: small facilities, individual rooms (not cells), therapeutic programming, education, work opportunities, and a clear pathway to release. Norway's recidivism rate (20% within two years) compared to America's (44% within one year) demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach.

---

Mass incarceration is a racial project. This statement is descriptive, not rhetorical.

In the United States: - Black people are incarcerated at five times the rate of white people - Latino people at 1.3 times the rate - One in three Black men born today can expect to be imprisoned at some point (The Sentencing Project) - Black people make up 13% of the U.S. population and 38% of the prison population

Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow documented how mass incarceration functions as a racial caste system — using formally race-neutral laws (drug sentencing disparities, three-strikes laws, cash bail) that produce racially disparate outcomes. The war on drugs, launched in 1971, was explicitly designed with racial targeting — a fact confirmed by Nixon's domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman in a 1994 interview.

Globally, indigenous and racial minority populations are disproportionately incarcerated in nearly every country: Aboriginal Australians (3% of the population, 29% of prisoners), Maori in New Zealand (16% of the population, 52% of prisoners), Roma in several European countries, Black Brazilians, and indigenous peoples across the Americas.

Prison abolition is, in significant part, a racial justice movement. You cannot dismantle mass incarceration without confronting the racial logic that built it.

---

The U.S. spends approximately $182 billion annually on mass incarceration — including policing, courts, jails, prisons, and related costs (Prison Policy Initiative, 2022). The cost per incarcerated person averages $35,000-$60,000 per year, depending on the state. In New York City, it exceeds $400,000 per year.

For $400,000, you could: - Fund four years of college and a year of housing - Provide a family with housing, food, and supportive services for three years - Fund 10 people through drug treatment programs - Employ three social workers for a year

The economic case for abolition is not that we should spend nothing on public safety. It's that we should spend on things that work. And incarceration, for the vast majority of offenses, doesn't work.

---

The punitive model assumes that safety is achieved by identifying dangerous individuals and removing them from society. The abolitionist model assumes that safety is achieved by building communities where people are less likely to cause harm in the first place — and where harm that does occur is addressed through repair rather than exile.

This is Law 1 at its most demanding. "We are human" includes the person who caused harm. Not because their actions are excused. Because their humanity is not conditional. And because exile — which is what incarceration is — doesn't make communities safer. It makes them more fractured, more fearful, and more dependent on the very system that isn't working.

---

1. The incarceration visualization. Research the incarceration rate in your country. Calculate how many people in your city or town are currently in prison. Imagine them — not as abstractions, but as people with families, childhoods, stories. What would they need to not be there?

2. The harm response inventory. Think of the last three times someone caused you harm — stole from you, lied to you, hurt you. For each one, ask: would incarceration have helped? What would have actually helped? Accountability? Repair? An apology? Distance? Treatment for the person?

3. The Norway comparison. Research Halden Prison in Norway — one of the world's most humane facilities. Look at the design, the programs, the outcomes. Compare it to a prison in your country. Notice what's different and what that difference produces.

4. The root cause trace. Read the background of one person currently in prison (many are available through The Marshall Project, The Innocence Project, or Prison Policy Initiative). Trace the path that led them there. Where were the intervention points where a different investment might have produced a different outcome?

---

- World Prison Brief (2024). "World Prison Population List." Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research. - Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press. - Davis, A.Y. (2003). Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press. - Gilmore, R.W. (2007). Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. University of California Press. - Sherman, L.W., & Strang, H. (2007). Restorative Justice: The Evidence. Smith Institute. - Prison Policy Initiative (2022). Following the Money of Mass Incarceration. PPI. - Hughes, C.E., & Stevens, A. (2010). "What Can We Learn from the Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs?" British Journal of Criminology, 50(6), 999–1022. - Pratt, J. (2008). Scandinavian Exceptionalism in an Era of Penal Excess. British Journal of Criminology, 48(2), 119–137.