Destroy the Prison Industrial Complex

The United States have one of the highest prison populations.
In both for profit and state prisons mentally ill people, addicts, desperate people, teenagers and frankly anyone who struggles and doesn’t fit neatly into society gets locked up, often under cruel conditions.
The prison industrial complex is a tool for oppression and should be torn down.

PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.

From where we are now, sometimes we can’t really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn’t just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It’s also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.

Queendragonfly · 31-35, F

It's easy to hate society and give up on a change after you've done time. While doing time, you're more likely than not treated like shit and you get so angry at the system that you are actually more motivated to fuck the system once you get out. In the end you'll identity more with others who hates the system than trying to fit in which makes it easy to continue the criminal lifestyle, it's more home than anything else.

To prevent this prisons can't be prisons.
And there must be more employees who take in people with criminal records. If it's already hard to find a job without a criminal record it's nearly impossible with one. It shouldn't be as hard as it is to get back in to society. If it's too difficult former inmates rather fall back in the comfort of criminality.

The system is not favouring criminals to get a new chance. It's designed to punish them forever.

smiler2012 · 56-60

{@rebelliousspirits] it makes you wonder as an non american how the americal penal system works and is it really thought about . putting someone with mental issues in prison for a crime is a disaster always about too happen attempted suicide or violence towards other prisoners more than likely provoked

whowasthatmaskedman · 70-79, M

@smiler2012 The American penal system simply doesnt work. As a penal system. Nor as a rehabilitation system. But it isnt meant to. Like so many American authorities it is meant to provide profit at every level for ther operators and maintain the status quo.
Private prisons make money for the operaors, who cut costs where they can. And they use the prisoners as cheap labor for contract work. (I suppose thats one way of keeping jobs in America).
But lets not forget the actual purpose of the penal system was to seperate criminals from the law abiding public and to teach them not to re-offend. "So hows that working out for you?"😷