Prisons function as criminal training centers and a just society would not need them

Evidence

“Forget about reform, it’s time to talk about abolishing jails and prisons in American society … Still—abolition? Where do you put the prisoners? The ‘criminals’? What’s the alternative? First, having no alternative at all would create less crime than the present criminal training centers do. Second, the only full alternative is building the kind of society that does not need prisons: A decent redistribution of power and income so as to put out the hidden fire of burning envy that now flames up in crimes of property—both burglary by the poor and embezzlement by the affluent. And a decent sense of community that can support, reintegrate and truly rehabilitate those who suddenly become filled with fury or despair, and that can face them not as objects—‘criminals’—but as people who have committed illegal acts, as have almost all of us.” — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 279

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘criminal training centers’ framing and redistribution as the cure drive the chapter’s closing argument toward a society without prisons.
• XREF: connects to: People are imprisoned largely because their communities are criminalized, not for crimes — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 296; Mass incarceration did not lower crime but bred more prisons; Prison functions as a recruitment and training centre for insurgencies — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 350 (+3 more)

Related

• People are imprisoned largely because their communities are criminalized, not for crimes (similarity 0.84)
• Punishment follows politics, corporate profit, and media, not crime itself (similarity 0.83)
• Schools remain the major conduits to prisons without structural change (similarity 0.82)
• Prison is treated as an inevitable fact of life even in communities it oppresses (similarity 0.82)
• Prison growth began when crime rates were already falling (similarity 0.82)
• Prisons demonstrably fail to reduce the crime rate (similarity 0.82)
• Prisons function as schools of crime and organized delinquency (similarity 0.81)
• Prison expansion correlates with falling crime, exposing profit and racism as drivers (similarity 0.81)
• Mass incarceration under Reagan did not reduce crime but bred ever larger prison populations. (similarity 0.80)
• Prisons create the illusion that free people’s rights and liberties are secured by imprisonment. (similarity 0.80)
• Prison expansion undermines democracy and normalizes incarceration for people of color (similarity 0.79)
• The prison industrial complex term contests crime as the root cause of imprisonment (similarity 0.79)
• Jails and prisons now hold more mentally ill people than mental institutions (similarity 0.79)
• Prison reform rhetoric reinforces the prison’s permanence. (similarity 0.79)
• Prisons proliferated while crime rates were falling due to corporate profit (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• People are imprisoned largely because their communities are criminalized, not for crimes #expands (0.70) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 296
• Mass incarceration did not lower crime but bred more prisons #expands (0.60)
• Prison functions as a recruitment and training centre for insurgencies #exemplifies (0.60) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 350
• Criminalized communities, not individual acts, determine who ends up imprisoned #corroborates (0.60)