Thomas Mathiesen has entered the chat

Ah, that’s a convincing point, but I’ve always felt my answer actually opens up the door for important discussions like :

-Historical // between slavery and prisons -Partial rebuttal of the question itself, or rather, its framing of the issue, my underlining it’s completely legitimate to advocate for the abolition of something without having a plug’n’play replacement for it

-Usually, people will follow up by highlighting cases of pedophiles and rapists, which could further be used to frame the discussion with them : who are we talking about?

-If I’m in a bad mood, I’ll also ask people : “My brother in Christ, weren’t there folks around who thought slavery was indeed created to solve an actual problem?”

But yeah, that’s only the first part of my answer, then we’ll move to the more grounded post-carceral society discussion.

Well, I can try to clarify here. Some prison abolitionist, activist or scholars, do indeed think there will be a residual proportion on crime that will necessitate kind of spatial segregationi, and, for some, being locked up for a time.

And it’s not necessarily conflicting with the abolitionist motto. They say : Well, prisons are buildings, but mostly, they are a social and historical function (punishing the poor, the political opposition, etc.). If we abolish that and there are like 3000 people in prison nationwide, the logic of stockpiling inmates will be gone. Maybe it will be possible to actually do something for them. The gap in punishment between the poor and the rich will be reduced if not gone.

Nevermind the building. If their historical function is gone, prisons are gone.

Ah. I’m not so comfortable with English but yeah, that was what I meant indeed!

That’s always my first answer indeed. "Well, I’m going to answer your question but first, just think about the abolition of legal slavery a while ago. What would you have thought about someone who would object : “yeah, but what will we replace slavery with ?”.

Well, that would reduce unemployment.

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed answer. I agree with you about almost everything.