Prisons - AFF 1Acs Obviously Don’T Read Both Racism and Gender – Pick One and Then Read Framing

Prisons - AFF 1ACs Obviously don’t read both racism and gender – pick one and then read framing. 1AC – Racism

Harsh sentencing laws render those who commit minor crimes dangerous felons who are now barred from mainstream society and relegated to second-class status. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf Once a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal, and privileges of citizenship such as voting and jury service are off-limits. It does not matter whether you have actually spent time in prison; your second-class citizenship begins the moment you are branded a felon. Most people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison. As of 2008, there were approximately 2.3 million people in prisons and jails, and a staggering 5.1 million people under "community correctional supervision"—i.e., on probation or parole.89 Merely reducing prison terms does not have a major impact on the majority of people in the system . It is the badge of inferiority — the felony record— that relegates people for their entire lives, to second-class status . As described in chapter 4, for drug felons, there is little hope of escape. Barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to "check the box" indicating a felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and denied licenses for a wide range of professions, people whose only crime is drug addiction or possession of a small amount of drugs for recreational use find themselves locked out of the mainstream society and economy—permanently .

Statistics show that African Americans are disproportionately surveilled and abused by police officers Nkechi Taifa 97, clinical instructor at Howard University School of Law and Director of Howard Clinical Law Center's Public Service Program, Spring 1997, ‘THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION (CERD): ARTICLE: Codification or Castration? The Applicability of the International Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Racial Discrimination to the U.S. Criminal Justice System,” Howard Law Journal, 40 How. L.J. 641 Statistics reveal that African Americans are far more likely to be physically abused and /or murdered by police officers charged to protect them. n157 Indeed, by the admission of some police officers, race is [*671 ] used as a determinative factor in deciding who to follow, detain, search, and arrest. n158¶ The lengthy history of police brutality against people of color is legion, and is still very prevalent today. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division receives about 8,000 complaints each year, with 75 to 85 percent of them involving problems with police. Most of these allegations are made by people of color. n159 "Police brutality as it relates to African Americans and minorities is real," observed Congressional Black Caucus Chairperson Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA). " The bigger and

blacker you are, the more at risk you are ." n160¶ On March 3, 1991 , eighty-one seconds of videotape filmed by a private citizen brought into national focus the blatant police brutality that is a tragic part of the African American experience. Rodney King, unarmed and clearly no visible threat to the fifteen or more policemen that surrounded him, received fifty-six blows and electric shocks from four White police officers. n161 Beamed into homes across the country was the image of Sergeant Stacey Koon twice firing a 50,000- volt Taser "stun gun" at the prostrate King, while three other members of the LAPD "took turns kicking him and smashing him in the head, neck, kidneys and legs with their truncheons." n162 As a result of this severe beating, King received 11 skull fractures, a crushed cheekbone, a broken ankle, internal injuries, a burn on his chest, and brain damage. n163 Unfortunately, this was not the first, nor the last incident of police brutality and, absent videotaped footage, it probably would have been ignored .¶ Statistics reveal that there are disproportionate ly high rates of the use of excessive and deadly force by police against people of color. n164 Research has shown that a variety of factors contribute to the problem of police brutality, including racism and prejudice, unfettered police discretion, the infamous police "code of silence," inadequate discipli- [*672] nary measures by police departments and administrators, and the ineffectiveness of current remedies. n165 Drug use serves as a prime example of institutionalized and condoned racism - Black men are arrested on drug charges 13 times as often as white men even though white men are more likely to use and sell drugs. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf There is, of course, an official explanation for all of this: crime rates. This explanation has tremendous appeal— before you know the facts—for it is consistent with, and reinforces, dominant racial narratives about crime and criminality dating back to slavery. The truth, however, is that rates and patterns of drug crime do not explain the glaring racial disparities in our criminal justice system. People of all races use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates.10 If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than people of color.11 One study, for example, published in 2000 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students.12 That same survey revealed that nearly identical percentages of white and black high school seniors use marijuana. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported in 2000 that white youth aged 12—17 are more than a third more likely to have sold illegal drugs than African American youth.13 Thus the very same year Human Rights Watch was reporting that African Americans were being arrested and imprisoned at unprecedented rates , government data revealed that blacks were no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes than whites and that white youth were actually the most likely of any racial or ethnic group to be guilty of illegal drug possession and sales. Any notion that drug use among blacks is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data; white youth have about three times the number of drug-related emergency room visits as their African American counterparts .14 The notion that whites comprise the vast majority of drug users and dealers—and may well be more likely than other racial groups to commit drug crimes—may seem implausible to some, given the media imagery we are fed on a daily basis and the racial composition of our prisons and jails. Upon reflection, however, the prevalence of white drug crime—including drug dealing—should not be surprising. After all, where do whites get their illegal drugs? Do they all drive to the ghetto to purchase them from somebody standing on a street corner? No. Studies consistently indicate that drug markets , like American society generally, reflect our nation's racial and socioeconomic boundaries. Whites tend to sell to whites; blacks to blacks.15 University students tend to sell to each other.16 Rural whites, for their part, don't make a special trip to the 'hood to purchase marijuana. They buy it from somebody down the road.17 White high school students typically buy drugs from white classmates, friends, or older relatives. Even Barry McCaffrey, former director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, once remarked, if your child bought drugs, "it was from a student of their own race generally."18 The notion that most illegal drug use and sales happens in the ghetto is pure fiction. Drug trafficking occurs there, but it occurs everywhere else in America as well. Nevertheless, black men have been admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is more than thirteen times higher than white men.19 The racial bias inherent in the drug war is a major reason that 1 in every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men.20 For young black men, the statistics are even worse. One in 9 black men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five was behind bars in 2006 , and far more were under some form of penal control—such as probation or parole.21 These gross racial disparities simply cannot be explained by rates of illegal drug activity among African Americans. The criminal justice system serves as a gateway into the larger system of institutionalized racism and mass incarceration that permanently marks people of color as members of America’s under caste. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf It may be helpful, in attempting to understand the basic nature of the new caste system, to think of the criminal justice system —the entire collection of institutions and practices that comprise it— not as an independent system but rather as a gateway into a much larger system of racial stigmatization and permanent marginalization. This larger system, referred to here as mass incarceration, is a system that locks people not only behind actual bars in actual prisons, but also behind virtual bars and virtual walls—walls that are invisible to the naked eye but function nearly as effectively as Jim Crow laws once did at lock ing people of color into a permanent second-class citizenship. The term mass incarceration refers not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison . Once released , former prisoners enter a hidden underworld of legalized discrimination and permanent social exclusion. They are members of America's new undercaste . Critiquing Criminal Justice Institutions allows for a broader debate about the unending racial stigmatization that African Americans are forced to live through both in and out of prison. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf The language of caste may well seem foreign or unfamiliar to some. Public discussions about racial caste in America are relatively rare . We avoid talking about caste in our society because we are ashamed of our racial history . We also avoid talking about race . We even avoid talking about class. Conversations about class are resisted in part because there is a tendency to imagine that one's class reflects upon one's character. What is key to America's understanding of class is the persistent belief—despite all evidence to the contrary—that anyone, with the proper discipline and drive, can move from a lower class to a higher class. We recognize that mobility may be difficult, but the key to our collective self-image is the assumption that mobility is always possible, so failure to move up reflects on one's character. By extension, the failure of a race or ethnic group to move up reflects very poorly on the group as a whole. What is completely missed in the rare public debates today about the plight of African Americans is that a huge percentage of them are not free to move up at all. It is not just that they lack opportunity, attend poor schools, or are plagued by poverty. They are barred by law from doing so . And the major institutions with which they come into contact are designed to prevent their mobility. To put the matter starkly: The current system of control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy. The system operates through our criminal justice institutions, but it functions more like a caste system than a system of crime control. Viewed from this perspective , the so-called underclass is better understood as an undercaste — a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society. Although this new system of racialized social control purports to be colorblind, it creates and maintains racial hierarchy much as earlier systems of control did. Like Jim Cro w (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race. Colorblindness has legitimized mass incarceration by failing to see the creation of a racial under caste – only a massive shift in policy can change dominant views. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf Saying that colorblindness is the problem may alarm some in the civil rights community, especially the pollsters and political consultants who have become increasingly influential in civil rights advocacy. For decades, civil rights leaders have been saying things like "we all want a colorblind society, we just disagree how to get there" in defense of race-conscious programs like affirmative action or racial data collection.35 Affirmative action has been framed as a legitimate exception to the colorblindness principle—a principle now endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the American electorate. Civil rights leaders are quick to assure the public that when we reach a colorblind nirvana, race consciousness will no longer be necessary or appropriate. Far from being a worthy goal, however, colorblindness has proved catastrophic for African Americans. It is not an overstatement to say the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the U nited S tates would not have been possible in the post—civil rights era if the nation had not fallen under the spell of a callous colorblindness . The seemingly innocent phrase, " I don't care if he's black . . ." perfectly captures the perversion of M artin L uther K ing Jr. 's dream that we may, one day, be able to see beyond race to connect spiritually across racial lines. Saying that one does not care about race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of cruelty . It is precisely because we , as a nation, have not cared much about African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to create a new racial undercaste . The deeply flawed nature of colorblindness, as a governing principle, is evidenced by the fact that the public consensus supporting mass incarceration is officially colorblind. It purports to see black and brown men not as black and brown, but simply as men—raceless men—who have failed miserably to play by the rules the rest of us follow quite naturally. The fact that so many black and brown men are rounded up for drug crimes that go largely ignored when committed by whites is unseen. Our collective colorblindness prevents us from seeing this basic fact. Our blindness also prevents us from seeing the racial and structural divisions that persist in society : the segregated, unequal schools, the segregated, jobless ghettos, and the segregated public discourse—a public conversation that excludes the current pariah caste. Our commitment to colorblindness extends beyond individuals to institutions and social arrangements. We have become blind , not so much to race, but to the existence of racial caste in America.

Prisons dehumanize inmates by seizing their privacy, stripping them of their personhood, and reducing all inmates to a disposable number Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf *edited for gendered language Prisons are places of intense brutality, violence, and dehumanization.70 In his seminal study of the New Jersey State Prison, The Society of Captives, sociologist Gresham M. Sykes carefully exposed how the fundamental structure of the modern U.S. prison degrades the inmate’s basic humanity and sense of selfworth.71 Caged or confined and stripped of his [their] freedom, the prisoner is forced to submit to an existence withou t the ability to exercise the basic capacities that define personhood in a liberal society.72 The inmate’s movement is tightly controlled , sometimes by chains and shackles, and always by orders backed with the threat of force ;73 his [their] body is subject to invasive cavity searches on command;74 he [he/she] is denied nearly all personal possessions; his [their] routines of eating, sleeping, and bodily maintenance are minutely managed ; he [he/she] may communicate and interact with others only on limited terms strictly dictated by his jailers; and he [ he/she ] is reduced to an identifying number, deprived of all that constitutes his [their] individuality .75 Sykes’s account of “the pains of imprisonment”76 attends not only to the dehumanizing effects of this basic structure of imprisonment—which remains relatively unchanged from the New Jersey penitentiary of 1958 to the U.S. jails and prisons that abound today77—but also to its violent effects on the personhood of the prisoner: Solitary confinement degrades humans---often worse than torture, it causes hallucinations, violent reactions and violates the UN convention on torture. Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf As incarcerated populations have increased, solitary confinement has emerged as a primary mechanism for internal jail and prison discipline , such that the actual number of individuals confined to a small cell for twenty-three hours per day remains unknown and may be significantly in excess of 80,000.88 Some people are sentenced to “Super-Max” facilities that only contain solitary cells; other people are placed in solitary confinement as punishment for violating prison rules or for their own protection. Stays in solitary confinement are often lengthy , even for relatively minor disciplinary rule violations, and may be indefinite . For example, one young prisoner caught with seventeen packs of Newport cigarettes was sentenced to fifteen days solitary confinement for each pack of cigarettes, totaling more than eight months of solitary confinement.89 Another prisoner in New Jersey spent eighteen years in solitary confinement. Although his solitary confinement status was subject to review every ninety days, this prisoner explained that he eventually stopped participating in the reviews as he felt they were “a sham, with no real investigation,” and lost hope that he would ever be able to leave.90 Solitary confinement has become a widely tolerated and “ regular part of the rhythm of prison life ,”91 yet this basic structure of prison discipline in the United States entails profound violence and dehumanization ; indeed, solitary confinement produces effects similar to physical torture. Psychiatrist Stuart Grassian first introduced to the psychiatric and medical community in the early 1980s that prisoners living in isolation suffered a constellation of symptoms including overwhelming anxiety, confusion, hallucinations, and sudden violent and self-destructive outbursts .92 This pattern of debilitating symptoms, sufficiently consistent among persons subject to solitary confinement (otherwise known as the Special Housing Unit (SHU)), gave rise to the designation of SHU Syndrome.93 Partly on this basis, the U nited N ations Special Rapporteur on Torture has found tha t certain U.S. practies of solitary confinement violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Punishment.94 Numerous psychiatric studies likewise corroborate that solitary confinement produces effects tantamount to torture .95 Bonnie Kerness, Associate Director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Prison Watch, testified before the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons that while visiting prisoners in solitary confinement, she spoke repeatedly “with people who begin to cut themselves, just so they can feel something.”96 Soldiers who are captured in war and subjected to solitary confinement and severe physical abuse also report the suffering of isolation to be as awful as, and even worse than, physical torture.97 But despite its more apparent horrors, solitary confinement is simply an extension of the logic and basic structure of prison -backed punishment— punitive isolation and surveillance—to the disciplinary regime of the prison itself. Solitary confinement’s justification and presumed efficacy flows from the assumed legitimacy of prison confinement in the first instance. Prison or jail confinement isolates the detained individual from the social world he inhabited previously, stripping that person of his capacity to move of his own volition, to interact with others, and to exercise control over the details of his own life. Once that initial form of confinement and deprivation of basic control over one’s own life is understood to be legitimate, solitary confinement merely applies the same approach to discipline within prison walls. But the basic physical isolation and confinement is already countenanced by the initial incarceration.

Abolition of prisons as the dominant mode of thinking is needed in order to address racism – reforms will only help the system to grow. Angela Davis, and Dylan Rodriguez 00, Davis teaches in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California and has been actively involved in prison-related campaigns and Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor at University of California - Riverside and was involved in the formation of Critical Resistance, 2000, “The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A Conversation”, http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/events/archives/images/Prison%20Abolition.pdf

There are multiple histories of prison abolition. The Scandinavian scholar/activist Thomas Mathieson first published his germinal text, The Politics of Abolition, in 1974 , when activist movements were calling for the disestablishment of prisons -- in the aftermath of the Attica Rebellion and prison uprisings throughout Europe. He was concerned with transforming prison reform movements into more radical movements to abolish prisons as the major institutions of punishment. There was a pattern of decarceration in the Netherlands until the mid-1980s, which seemed to establish the Dutch system as a model prison system, and the later rise in prison construction and the expansion of the incarcerated population has served to stimulate abolitionist ideas. Criminologist Willem de Haan published a book in 1990 entitled The Politics of Redress: Crime, Punishment, and Penal Abolition. One of the most interesting texts, from the point of view of U.S. activist history is Fay Honey Knopp's volume Instead of Prison: A Handbook for Prison Abolitionists, which was published in 1976, with funding from the American Friends. This handbook points out the contradictory relationship between imprisonment and an "enlightened, free society." Prison abolition, like the abolition of slavery, is a long-range goal and the handbook argues that an abolitionist approach requires an analysis of "crime" that links it with social structures, as opposed to individual pathology, as well as "anticrime" strategies that focus on the provision of social resources. Of course, there are many versions of prison abolitionism -- including those that propose to abolish punishment altogether and replace it with reconciliatory responses to criminal acts. In my opinion, t he most powerful relevance of abolitionist theory and practice today resides in the fact that without a radical position vis-a-vis the rapidly expanding prison system , prison architecture, prison surveillance, and prison system corporatization, prison culture, with all its racist and totalitarian implications, will continue not only to claim ever increasing numbers of people of color, but also to shape social relations more generally in our society. Prison needs to be abolished as the dominant mode of addressing social problems that are better solved by other institutions and other means. The call for prison abolition urges us to imagine and strive for a very different social landscape. Abolition is not an institutional change but instead challenges the moral legitimacy behind the idea of confinement Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf In contrast to leading scholarly and policy efforts to reform criminal law,¶ abolition decidedly does not seek merely to replace incarceration with alternatives¶ that are closely related to imprisonment, such as punitive policing, noncustodial¶ criminal supervision, probation, civil institutionalization, and parole.25 Abolition instead entails a rejection of the moral legitimacy of confining people in cages , whether that caging is deemed “civil” or whether it follows a failure to comply¶ with technical terms of supervised release or a police order.26 So too the positive¶ project of abolition addressed in this Article is decidedly not an effort to replicat e the institutional transfer that occurred in the aftermath of the deinstitutionalization of mental institutions.27 An abolitionist framework requires positive¶ forms of social integration and collective security that are not organized around criminal law enforcement, confinement, criminal surveillance, punitive policing, or punishment . Racism must be rejected in every instance without surcease. It justifies atrocities, and is truly the capital sin. Memmi 2k – Albert, Professor Emeritus of Sociology @ Unv. Of Paris, Albert (RACISM, translated by Steve Martinot, pp.163-165) The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission, probably never achieved, yet for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without surcease and without concessions. One cannot be indulgent toward racism. One cannot even let the monster in the house, especially not in a mask. To give it merely a foothold means to augment the bestial part in us and in other people which is to diminish what is human. To accept the racist universe to the slightest degree is to endorse fear, injustice, and violence. It is to accept the persistence of the dark history in which we still largely live. It is to agree that the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which [person] man is not [themself] himself an outsider relative to someone else?). Racism illustrates in sum, the inevitable negativity of the condition of the dominated ; that is it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human condition . The anti-racist struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to the ultimate passage from animality to humanity. In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge. However, it remains true that one’s moral conduct only emerges from a choice: one has to want it. It is a choice among other choices, and always debatable in its foundations and its consequences. Let us say, broadly speaking, that the choice to conduct oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order for which racism is the very negation. This is almost a redundancy. One cannot found a moral order, let alone a legislative order , on racism because racism signifies the exclusion of the other and his or her subjection to violence and domination. From an ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is “ the truly capital sin. ”fn22 It is not an accident that almost all of humanity’s spiritual traditions counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or strangers. It is not just a question of theoretical counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows or strangers. It is not just a question of theoretical morality and disinterested commandments. Such unanimity in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of such sentiments. All things considered, we have an interest in banishing injustice, because injustice engenders violence and death. Of course, this is debatable. There are those who think that if one is strong enough, the assault on and oppression of others is permissible. But no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest. One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed. All unjust society contains within itself the seeds of its own death. It is probably smarter to treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect. “Recall,” says the bible, “that you were once a stranger in Egypt,” which means both that you ought to respect the stranger because you were a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming once again someday. It is an ethical and a practical appeal – indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it might be. In short, the refusal of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical morality . Because, in the end, the ethical choice commands the political choice . A just society must be a society accepted by all. If this contractual principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be our lot. If it is accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace. True, it is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.

Prisons are running rampant with sexual victimization, female prisoners suffer brutal treatment equivalent to torture in maximum security facilities Dave W. Frank, 14, Attorney at Christopher C. Myers & Associates , Ohio Northern University—Claude W. Pettit College of Law, 2/14/14, “Commentary: Abandoned: Abolishing Female Prisons to Prevent Sexual Abuse and Herald an End to Incarceration”, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1322&context=bglj

A few months before the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2012 inspection of Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women,65 it released the first national survey to comprehensively document the extent of sexual abuse in U.S. prisons.66 In this report, the Department of Justice relied on reports by former prisoners rather than reports by prison officials67 or inmates still in prison—a departure from the methods used in previous national surveys. 68 The 2012 survey gave a clear picture of what many had suspected:69 Prisoners commonly suffer “brutality [that] is the equivalent of torture .” 70 ¶ Within the U.S. system of mass incarceration, nearly one out of six women and close to one out of ten of all prisoners has been sexually victimized ,71 according to the Justice Department.72 Anal tearing, vaginal tearing, chipped teeth, and lost teeth are the most common injuries experienced by former prisoners who report sexual victimization.73 Among former prisoners who reported unwilling sexual activity with staff, approximately one quarter were coerced into such activity through blackmails or bribes by staff, and nearly one half were coerced through offers of favors or special privileges by staff.74 Sexual victimization by staff most often occurs in a closet, office, or locked room, while inmate-on inmate assault, which constitutes the majority of victimization, most often occurs in the victim’s cell.75 A Human Rights Watch report affirmed that “being a woman prisoner in a U.S. state prison can be a terrifying experience.” 76 Further, the likelihood of female prisoner sexual victimization , according to the DOJ survey, generally increases in accordance with the length of prison sentences and level of confinement.77 The majority of sexual abuse occurs in prisons , a much smaller percentage occurs in local jails, and almost none occurs at post-release community treatment facilities .78 Female sexual victimization , accordingly , is highest in maximum-security facilities like Tutwiler and lowest in facilities that allow daytime release. 79 ¶ A prison’s ability to control , confine, and inspect a prisoner necessarily defines its ability to abuse her body .80 Efforts toward reform that intensify or expand incarceration only recast the problem.81 If prison is the total governance of the prisoner, greater control of physical bodies will not reduce the instance of a problem shown to increase with a punishment’s severity. Unlike the U.S. Prison Rape Elimination Act, the U.K proposal would by its nature end sexual abuse in female prisons and drive incarceration and punishment into obsolescence. Male Guards regularly abuse female prisoners--- forced sex, harassment, groping, and hostility form a highly sexualized and patriarchal environment Angela Y. Davis 03, Professor of Feminist Studies at University of CA Santa Cruz, 2003, “Are Prisons Obsolete?”, http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp- content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf As the level of repression in women's prisons increases, and, paradoxically, as the influence of domestic prison regimes recedes, sexual abuse—which, like domestic violence, is yet another dimension of the privatized punishment of women— has become an institutionalized component of punishment behind prison walls. Although guard- on-prisoner sexual abuse is not sanctioned as such, the widespread leniency with which offending officers are treated suggests that for women, prison is a space in which the threat of sexualized violence that looms in the larger society is effectively sanctioned as a routine aspect of the land - scape of punishment behind prison walls. According to a 1996 Human Rights Watch report on the sexual abuse of women in U.S. prisons: Our findings indicate that being a woman prisoner in U.S. state prisons can be a terrifying experience. If you are sexually abused , you cannot escape from your abuser . Grievance or investigatory procedures, where they exist, are often ineffectual, and correctional employees continue to engage in abuse because they believe they will rarely be held accountable, administratively or criminally. Few people outside the prison walls know what is going on or care if they do know. Fewer still do anything to address the problem. The following excerpt from the summary of this report, entitled All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons, reveals the extent to which women's prison environments are violently sexualized, thus recapitulating the familiar violence that characterizes many women's private lives: We found that male correctional employees have vaginally, anally, and orally raped female prisoners and sexually assaulted and abused them. We found that in the course of committing such gross misconduct, male officers have not only used actual or threatened physical force, but have also used their near total authority to provide or deny goods and privileges to female prisoners to compel them to have sex or, in other cases, to reward them for having done so. In other cases, male officers have violated their most basic professional duty and engaged in sexual contact with female prisoners absent the use of threat of force or any material exchange. In addition to engaging in sexual relations with prisoners, male officers have use d mandatory pat-frisks or room searches to grope women's breasts, buttocks, and vaginal areas and to view them inappropriately while in a state of undress in the housing or bathroom areas. Male correctional officers and staff have also engage d in regular verbal degradation and harassment of female prisoners , thus contributing to a custodial environment in the state prisons for women that is often highly sexualized and excessively hostile ." Prisons dehumanize inmates by seizing their privacy, stripping them of their personhood, and reducing all inmates to a disposable number Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf *edited for gendered language Prisons are places of intense brutality, violence, and dehumanization.70 In his seminal study of the New Jersey State Prison, The Society of Captives, sociologist Gresham M. Sykes carefully exposed how the fundamental structure of the modern U.S. prison degrades the inmate’s basic humanity and sense of selfworth.71 Caged or confined and stripped of his freedom, the prisoner is forced to submit to an existence withou t the ability to exercise the basic capacities that define personhood in a liberal society.72 The inmate’s movement is tightly controlled , sometimes by chains and shackles, and always by orders backed with the threat of force ;73 his [their] body is subject to invasive cavity searches on command;74 he [he/she] is denied nearly all personal possessions; his [their] routines of eating, sleeping, and bodily maintenance are minutely managed ; he [he/she] may communicate and interact with others only on limited terms strictly dictated by his jailers; and he [ he/she ] is reduced to an identifying number, deprived of all that constitutes his [their] individuality .75 Sykes’s account of “the pains of imprisonment”76 attends not only to the dehumanizing effects of this basic structure of imprisonment—which remains relatively unchanged from the New Jersey penitentiary of 1958 to the U.S. jails and prisons that abound today77—but also to its violent effects on the personhood of the prisoner: Solitary confinement degrades humans---often worse than torture, it causes hallucinations, violent reactions and violates the UN convention on torture. Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf As incarcerated populations have increased, solitary confinement has emerged as a primary mechanism for internal jail and prison discipline , such that the actual number of individuals confined to a small cell for twenty-three hours per day remains unknown and may be significantly in excess of 80,000.88 Some people are sentenced to “Super-Max” facilities that only contain solitary cells; other people are placed in solitary confinement as punishment for violating prison rules or for their own protection. Stays in solitary confinement are often lengthy , even for relatively minor disciplinary rule violations, and may be indefinite . For example, one young prisoner caught with seventeen packs of Newport cigarettes was sentenced to fifteen days solitary confinement for each pack of cigarettes, totaling more than eight months of solitary confinement.89 Another prisoner in New Jersey spent eighteen years in solitary confinement. Although his solitary confinement status was subject to review every ninety days, this prisoner explained that he eventually stopped participating in the reviews as he felt they were “a sham, with no real investigation,” and lost hope that he would ever be able to leave.90 Solitary confinement has become a widely tolerated and “ regular part of the rhythm of prison life ,”91 yet this basic structure of prison discipline in the United States entails profound violence and dehumanization ; indeed, solitary confinement produces effects similar to physical torture. Psychiatrist Stuart Grassian first introduced to the psychiatric and medical community in the early 1980s that prisoners living in isolation suffered a constellation of symptoms including overwhelming anxiety, confusion, hallucinations, and sudden violent and self-destructive outbursts .92 This pattern of debilitating symptoms, sufficiently consistent among persons subject to solitary confinement (otherwise known as the Special Housing Unit (SHU)), gave rise to the designation of SHU Syndrome.93 Partly on this basis, the U nited N ations Special Rapporteur on Torture has found tha t certain U.S. practies of solitary confinement violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Punishment.94 Numerous psychiatric studies likewise corroborate that solitary confinement produces effects tantamount to torture .95 Bonnie Kerness, Associate Director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Prison Watch, testified before the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons that while visiting prisoners in solitary confinement, she spoke repeatedly “with people who begin to cut themselves, just so they can feel something .”96 Soldiers who are captured in war and subjected to solitary confinement and severe physical abuse also report the suffering of isolation to be as awful as, and even worse than, physical torture.97 But despite its more apparent horrors, solitary confinement is simply an extension of the logic and basic structure of prison -backed punishment— punitive isolation and surveillance—to the disciplinary regime of the prison itself. Solitary confinement’s justification and presumed efficacy flows from the assumed legitimacy of prison confinement in the first instance. Prison or jail confinement isolates the detained individual from the social world he inhabited previously, stripping that person of his capacity to move of his own volition, to interact with others, and to exercise control over the details of his own life. Once that initial form of confinement and deprivation of basic control over one’s own life is understood to be legitimate, solitary confinement merely applies the same approach to discipline within prison walls. But the basic physical isolation and confinement is already countenanced by the initial incarceration. Specifically, the strip search represents the routinization of sexual abuse and coercion within prisons. Angela Y. Davis 03, Professor of Feminist Studies at University of CA Santa Cruz, 2003, “Are Prisons Obsolete?”, http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp- content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf Sexual abuse is surreptitiously incorporated into one of the most habitual aspects of women's imprisonment, the strip search . As activists and prisoners themselves have pointed out, the state itself is directly implicated in this routinization of sexual abuse both in permitting such conditions that render women vulnerable to explicit sexual coercion carried out by guards and other prison staff and by incorporating into routine policy such practices as the strip search and body cavity search. Australian lawyer/activist Amanda George has pointed out that at a November 2001 conference on women in prison held by the Brisbane-based organization Sisters Inside, Amanda George described an action performed before a national gathering of correctional personnel working in women's prisons. Several women seiz ed control of the stage and, some playing guards, others playing the roles of prisoners, dramatized a strip search . According to George , the gathering was so repulsed by this enactment of a practice that occurs routinely in women's prisons everywhere that many of the participants felt compelled to disassociate themselves from such practices, insisting that this was not what they did. Some of the guards , George said, simply cried upon watching representations of their own actions outside the prison context. What they must have realized is that " without the uniform, without the power of the state, (the strip search would be sexual assault ."99 But why is an understanding of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse in women's prisons an important element of a radical analysis of the prison system, and especially of those forward-looking analyses that lead us in the direction of abolition? Because the call to abolish the prison as the dominant form of punishment cannot ignore the extent to which the institution of the prison has stockpiled ideas and practices that are hopefully approaching obsolescence in the larger society, but that retain all their ghastly vitality behind prison walls . The destructive combination of racism and misogyny, however much it has been challenged by social movements, scholarship, and art over the last three decades, retains all its awful consequences within women's prisons. The relatively uncontested presence of sexual abuse in women's prisons is one of many such examples. The increasing evidence of a U.S. prison industrial complex with global resonances leads us to think about the extent to which the many corporations that have acquired an investment in the expansion of the prison system are, like the state, directly implicated in an institution that perpetuates violence against women.

The prison system turns female prisoners into “fallen women” whose only purpose is domestic service and subjugation to men. Angela Y. Davis 03, Professor of Feminist Studies at University of CA Santa Cruz, 2003, “Are Prisons Obsolete?”, http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp- content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf According to dominant views, women convicts were irrevocably fallen women , with no possibility of salvation. If male criminals were considered to be public individuals who had simply violated the social contract, female criminals were seen as having transgressed fundamental moral principles of womanhood . The reformers, who, following Elizabeth Fry, argued that women were capable of redemption , did not really contest these ideological assumptions about women's place. In other words, they did not question the very notion of "fallen women." Rather, they simply opposed the idea that "fallen women" could not be saved. They could be saved, the reformers contended, and toward that end they advocated separate penal facilities and a specifically female approach to punishment. Their approach called for architectural models that replaced cells with cottages and "rooms" in a way that was supposed to infuse domesticity in to prison life. This model facilitated a regime devised to reintegrate criminalized women into the domestic life of wife and mother . They did not , however, acknowledge the class and race underpinnings of this regime. Training that was, on the surface, designed to produce good wives and mothers in effect steered poor women (and especially black women) into "free world" jobs in domestic service . Instead of stay-at-home skilled wives and mothers, many women prisoners, upon release, would become maids, cooks, and washerwomen for more affluent women. A female custodial staff, the reformers also argued, would minimize the sexual temptations, which they believed were often at the root of female criminality. Prisons inherently perpetuate rape culture and foster sexual assault and rape within their institutions, affirming the patriarchal norms that dominate society – reforms can’t solve. Josh Kitto, 15, freelance political journalist who has written for the Guardian, Vice, and Truthout. He is particularly interested in LGBTQ and feminist issues, protest movements, prisons, immigration, and counterterrorism policy, 2/24/15, “Rape culture: would prison abolition help women?”, https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/josh-kitto/rape-culture-would-prison- abolition-help-women Prisons “ both require and foster violence”, criminology professor Sarah Lamble argues. The entire system of incarceration, from prisons and the police to immigration detention centres, are simply another one of rape culture's functions. I n turn, rape and assault provides a perverse stability to the prison system. This further prevents the realisation of transformative justice for surv ivors.¶ Often upending the patriarchal violence ingrained within the prison system is considered more disruptive than the violence itself . As Michael Denzel Smith states: “The fact that we do little to enforce those laws is the tacit recognition that in order for the current system to remain intact, a degree of violence against women is necessary”.¶ What's more, relocating rapists incubates rape culture. Statistics on UK prison rape are more vague than in the US, with Justice Secretary Christ Grayling blocking a Howard League investigation into the issue - the Ministry of Justice says questions about assault are ‘intrusive’. Research suggests guards routinely sexually coerce women prisoners (a third of who are survivors of sexual abuse). There are also revelations of endemic sexual assault and harassment of women detainees at Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre, for example.¶ In the US, the response to prison rape is to move the victim to ‘protective custody', or solitary confinement. But this is also a tool employed to silence women who report sexual assault by guards . Further, Solitary Watch estimate half of trans women in New York prisons have been sexually assaulted by guards while in solitary confinement.¶ But showing that prisons are sites of systemic sexual violence does not establish that immediate abolition would lead to quantitatively fewer rapes. The question is then if these carceral functions cannot provide the framework for eliminating rape and assault, what alternative structures can be established?¶ One option is ‘restorative justice’ , involving facilitated meetings between the perpetrator and victim - to enable answers for any questions the victim has of the perpetrator, or acknowledgement of the harm caused. The New Zealand-based Project Restore is prominent in advocating this approach, which stems out of Maori accountability practices. In theory, this might provide some conciliation - equilibrium can be restored to the disrupted families, communities, and networks, if only by having the perpetrator acknowledge fault.¶ However, even Project Restore concedes the limits of such an approach. It does not, by itself, create conditions that enable safety and resistance to violence and oppression - or provide reparations to victims. Indeed, these projects gained traction within neoliberal approaches seeking cheaper alternatives to incarceration. Even the name, 'restorative’ justice, reveals the limits of its intended effect. Rather than accountability for the victim and recognition of their needs, the peace of communities and families that failed to protect the victim from violence is intended – to restore things as they were.¶ Another alternative is 'transformative justice', which focuses on developing 'community accountability' structures to disrupt cycles of abuse and assault. This framework has been developed by women of colour-led US groups like INCITE!, Sista II Sista, and Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), who organise against interpersonal and state violence. The idea is that support groups from the community facilitate a process between the victim and the perpetrator, and a process of dialogue and admission of responsibility by the perpetrator then approximates the necessary steps to repair harm. The support groups then monitor whether these steps are maintained.¶ 'Transformative justice' is centred in developing the community's autonomy in order to prevent violence. It sees retribution as reactive, and incarceration as unable and incapable of unpacking more difficult questions about state violence, or the complicity of communal networks that feel obligated to intervene to stop drink driving, for example, but not child abuse.¶ But a 'transformative' solution cannot simply involve a sentimentalised restorative justice system with a neoliberal renovation i.e. one that prioritises restoring unequal power relations for the sake of 'peace' or expense, or transferring arbitrary judicial functions to communities, assuming this accounts for all of the survivor's needs.¶ Patriarchy causes poverty, environmental degradation, wars, and extinction – ontological shift is key Jytte Nhanenge- Development Consultant studies development policies in Africa; February 2007; “Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating The Concerns of Women, Poor People and Nature Into Development” Chapter 2 argued that the modern , mechanistic, scientific world-view to a large extend is responsible for the four crises. Its over-reward of quantitative activities means that the quality of life for society and nature is deteriorating. Chapter 5 and 6 discussed that science - especially the discipline of economics and its tech nology, together with the scientific program of Third World development - consistently are dominating and exploiting women, Others and nature. The root cause relates to the fact that only masculine or yang forces are included in the scientific view of reality. Feminine or yin forces are oppositely excluded. This dualised patriarchal ideology must logically manifest in domination of women, Others and nature. Science, economics, technology, politics and social organization consequently only include half of reality. The other half is considered of little value and as a resource for exploitation. Hence not only women, Others and nature, but also all other feminine or yin issues are considered as being subordinate. This imbalance has meant that there is an exaggerated focus on masculine human characteristics, like rationality, individualism, competition, egoism, greed and profit-maximization. At the same time the feminine human characteristics of emotion, community, cooperation and conservation have been overlooked. This has lead to unethical human behaviour and dominant relationship among many people, specifically between men and women, adults and children, white and coloured people, modern and traditional people, rich and poor people. The priority on masculine traits has also resulted in an almost complete lack of relationship between human beings and nature. Deficiency of balance between yang and yin has moreover meant that feminine experiences including indigenous knowledge cannot officially be included in the current masculine knowledge system. The product is a distorted knowledge system . Since this knowledge system is the foundation of modern political, economic and social organisation , it has resulted in absence of care and concern for creation and maintenance of sustainable social and natural inter-relations. The exclusion of feminine attributes has consequently created disharmony, which has culminated in the crises of war and violence, poverty and inequality, environmental destruction and human repression. The main sufferers from these crises are women, Others and nature. 515 Since these crises continuously are intensifying, and extinction of the human race has become an issue of public concern, it is increasingly important to change the masculine perception of reality. This dissertation suggests that the solution must be a replacement of the exclusive, masculine world-view by an inclusive ontology, which has a dynamic tension between masculine and feminine elements. In chapter 3 Smuts' holism, the general systems theory and the Chinese I Ching (yin/yang) schemes were suggested as possible alternatives. They present a shift from a reductionist to a holistic perception of reality, hence all three models would logically include the perception of women, Others and nature. Such a transformation would require a re-definition of the current basic scientific concepts like its definition of a person; its quantitative knowledge generation; its perception of human communities, and essentially its militaristic manner of enforcing peace. The aim of this chapter is, in a limited way, to try and suggest what should be included in these new, holistic concepts. Highly militaristic views of the world endorsed by patriarchy serves as the root cause to all other impacts Warren –chair of the philosophy department at Macalester College and Cady - professor of philosophy at Hamline University, 94 [Karen and Duane, “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Hypatia, Volume 9, Issue 2, p. 16] Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise, (c), and the unmanageability, (d), which results. For example, in the United States, current estimates are that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape, sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-masochistic pornography are examples of behaviors practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy . In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors, strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They , too, rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to "rape the earth," that it is "man's God-given right" to have dominion (that is, domination ) over the earth , that nature has only instrumental value, that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for "progress."And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the current" unmanageability" of contemporary life in patriarchal societies , (d), is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender identified beliefs , values, attitudes, and assumptions . Included among these real-life consequences are precisely those concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, environmental destruction, and violence toward women , which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through observing these dysfunctional behaviors-the symptoms of dysfunctionality that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this "unmanageability" can be seen for what it is-as a predictable and thus logical consequence of patriarchy.'1 The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature (see Russell 1989, 2). Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that " militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal value s and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth" (Spretnak 1989, 54). Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning : Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which , if continued , will make life on earth difficult, if not impossible . It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in regional, national, and global contexts.

Only complete abolition can solve the impacts--- it spills over to the abolition of all prisons and prompts a massive discussion on gender in society. Dave W. Frank, 14, Attorney at Christopher C. Myers & Associates , Ohio Northern University—Claude W. Pettit College of Law, 2/14/14, “Commentary: Abandoned: Abolishing Female Prisons to Prevent Sexual Abuse and Herald an End to Incarceration”, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1322&context=bglj Female prison abolition would end the sexual abuse common in those facilities and begin a movement to end all incarceration in the U.S . The alternatives to prison advocated by the U.K. reformers, such as increasing social services support and community involvement, are the proper replacements for current confinement practices . ¶ Alternatives to incarceration that reproduce the methodology and motivations of imprisonment are not enough. These alternatives merely displace the vengeance, violence, control, surveillance, and cruelty that underlie our current incarceration system. Punishment that takes place in the community, rather than inside a jail, still encourages society to persecute rather than aid a disfavored minority – people accused and convicted of crimes. ¶ As Clarence Darrow wrote in Resist Not Evil, “[i]n the rule of force the weak must always fall.” 162 Insistence on imprisonment or prison-like punishments , especially when alternatives exist, reveals vengeance as the true purpose carceral confinement. The U.S. should renounce this self-imposed duty to punish, and instead bring an end to the collective sexual victimization of female prisoners. ¶ The proposal of female prison abolition in the U.S. as the best solution to eradicating sexual abuse in these facilities relies on a few key premises. First, the U.S. cannot reasonably guarantee incarcerated women will be free from sexual victimization .163 Second, alternatives to incarceration sufficiently address the aims of correction. 164 Third, the continued incarceration of U.S. women in facilities where they face a substantial danger of sexual victimization is unconscionable . 165 Any argument for the value of carceral punishment in spite of the danger of sexual victimization is not compelling.166 If the sexual victimization of women is inherent to the U.S. prison system, and if an alternative model is available, and further, if that alternative model addresses the legitimate needs of society, then the U.S. should favor the alternative as a replacement for incarceration.167 An alternative approach based on the U.K. model of community care and support is the solution needed.¶ Abolition is not an institutional change but instead challenges the moral legitimacy behind the idea of confinement Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf In contrast to leading scholarly and policy efforts to reform criminal law,¶ abolition decidedly does not seek merely to replace incarceration with alternatives¶ that are closely related to imprisonment, such as punitive policing, noncustodial¶ criminal supervision, probation, civil institutionalization, and parole.25 Abolition¶ instead entails a rejection of the

moral legitimacy of confining people in cages ,¶ whether that caging is deemed “civil” or whether it follows a failure to comply¶ with technical terms of supervised release or a police order.26 So too the positive¶ project of abolition addressed in this Article is decidedly not an effort to replicat e¶ the institutional transfer that occurred in the aftermath of the deinstitutionalization¶ of mental institutions.27 An abolitionist framework requires positive¶ forms of social integration and collective security that are not organized around¶ criminal law enforcement, confinement, criminal surveillance, punitive policing,¶ or punishment .

The federal system of incarceration creates a perpetual cycle of discrimination—once felons, people are stripped of basic rights—only total elimination of the system will solve, sentencing reform is not enough Michelle Alexander 10, associate professor of law at Stanford Law School, civil rights lawyer, advocate and legal scholar, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 2010, p. 93-6 The Prison Label¶ Most people imagine that the explosion in the U.S. prison population during the past twenty-five years reflects changes in crime rates. Few would guess that our prison population leaped from approximately 350,000 to 2.3 million in such a short period of time due to changes in laws and policies, not changes in crime rates. Yet it has been changes in our laws—particularly the dramatic increases in the length of prison sentences—that have been responsible for the growth of our prison system, not increases in crime. One study suggests that the entire increase in the prison population from 1980 to 2001 can be explained by sentencing policy changes .88 Because harsh sentencing is a major cause of the prison explosion, one might reasonably assume that substantially reducing the length of prison sentences would effectively dismantle this new system of control . That view, however, is mistaken . This system depends on the prison label, not prison time.¶ Once a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal, and privileges of citizenship such as voting and jury service are off-limits. It does not matter whether you have actually spent time in prison; your second-class citizenship begins the moment you are branded a felon. Most people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison. As of 2008, there were approximately 2.3 million people in prisons and jails, and a staggering 5.1 million people under “community correctional supervision”—i.e., on probation or parole.89 Merely reducing prison terms does not have a major impact on the majority of people in the system. It is the badge of inferiority— the felony record—that relegates people for their entire lives, to secondclass status. As described in chapter 4, for drug felons, there is little hope of escape. Barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to “check the box” indicating a felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and denied licenses for a wide range of professions, people whose only crime is drug addiction or possession of a small amount of drugs for recreational use fi nd themselves locked out of the mainstream society and economy—permanently.¶ No wonder, then, that most people labeled felons find their way back into prison. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study, about 30 percent of released prisoners in its sample were rearrested within six months of release. 90 Within three years, nearly 68 percent were rearrested at least once for a new offense.91 Only a small minority are rearrested for violent crimes; the vast majority are rearrested for property offenses, drug offenses, and offenses against the public order.92¶ For those released on probation or parole, the risks are especially high. They are subject to regular surveillance and monitoring by the police and may be stopped and searched (with or without their consent) for any reason or no reason at all. As a result, they are far more likely to be arrested (again) than those whose behavior is not subject to constant scrutiny by law enforcement. Probationers and parolees are at increased risk of arrest because their lives are governed by additional rules that do not apply to everyone else. Myriad restrictions on their travel and behavior (such as a prohibition on associating with other felons), as well as various requirements of probation and parole (such as paying fi nes and meeting with probation offi cers), create opportunities for arrest. Violation of these special rules can land someone right back in prison. In fact, that is what happens a good deal of the time.¶ The extraordinary increase in prison admissions due to parole and probation violations is due almost entirely to the War on Drugs. With respect to parole, in 1980, only 1 percent of all prison admissions were parole violators. Twenty years later, more than one third (35 percent) of prison admissions resulted from parole violations.93 To put the matter more starkly: About as many people were returned to prison for parole violations in 2000 as were admitted to prison in 1980 for all reasons.94 Of all parole violators returned to prison in 2000, only one-third were returned for a new conviction; twothirds were returned for a technical violation such as missing appointments with a parole offi cer, failing to maintain employment, or failing a drug test.95 In this system of control, failing to cope well with one’s exile status is treated like a crime. If you fail, after being released from prison with a criminal record—your personal badge of inferiority— to remain drug free, or if you fail to get a job against all the odds, or if you get depressed and miss an appointment with your parole offi cer (or if you cannot afford the bus fare to take you there), you can be sent right back to prison —where society apparently thinks millions of Americans belong.¶ This disturbing phenomenon of people cycling in and out of prison, trapped by their second-class status, has been described by Loïc Wacquant as a “closed circuit of perpetual marginality.”96 Hundreds of thousands of people are released from prison every year, only to find themselves locked out of the mainstream society and economy. Most ultimately return to prison, sometimes for the rest of their lives. Others are released again, only to find themselves in precisely the circumstances they occupied before, unable to cope with the stigma of the prison label and their permanent pariah status.¶ Reducing the amount of time people spend behind bars—by eliminating harsh mandatory minimums—will alleviate some of the unnecessary suffering caused by this system, but it will not disturb the closed circuit. Those labeled felons will continue to cycle in and out of prison, subject to perpetual surveillance by the police, and unable to integrate into the mainstream society and economy. Unless the number of people who are labeled felons is dramatically reduced, and unless the laws and policies that keep ex-offenders marginalized from the mainstream society and economy are eliminated, the system will continue to create and maintain an enormous undercaste. Plan Texts Thus the plan: The United States Federal Government should abolish federal prisons. Framing Utilitarianism disregards respect for the individual and perpetuates societal inequality by evaluating utility as a whole Freeman 94 – Avalon Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. Harvard University, J.D. University of North Carolina (Samuel, “Utilitarianism, Deontology, and the Priority of Right,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 4, Autumn, pp. 313-349, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265463) The inclusion of all sentient beings in the calculation of interests severely undermines the force of any claim that utilitarianism is an "egalitarian" doctrine, based in some notion of equal concern and respect for persons. But let us assume Kymlicka can restore his thesis by insisting that it concerns, not utilitarianism as a general moral doctrine, but as a more limited thesis about political morality. (Here I pass over the fact that none of the utilitarians he relies on to support his egalitarian interpretation construe the doctrine as purely political. The drift of modern utilitarian theory is just the other way: utilitarianism is not seen as a political doctrine, to be appealed to by legislators and citizens, but a nonpublic criterion of right that is indirectly applied [by whom is a separate issue] to assess the nonutilitarian public political conception of justice.) Still, let us assume it is as a doctrine of political morality that utilitarianism treats persons, and only persons, as equals. Even in this form it cannot be that maximizing utility is "not a goal" but a "by- product," "entirely derived from the prior requirement to treat people with equal consideration " (CPP, p. 31) Kymlicka says, "If utilitarianism is best seen as an egalitarian doctrine, then there is no independent commitment to the idea of maximizing welfare" (CPP, p. 35, emphases added). But how can this be? (i) What is there about the formal principle of equal consideration (or for that matter occupying a universal point of view) which would imply that we maximize the aggregate of individuals' welfare? Why not assume, for example, that equal consideration requires maximizing the division of welfare (strict equality, or however equal division is to be construed); or, at least maximize the multiple (which would result in more equitable distributions than the aggregate)? Or, why not suppose equal consideration requires equal proportionate satisfaction of each person's interests (by for example, determining our resources and then satisfying some set percentage of each person's desires) . Or finally we might rely on some Paretian principle: equal consideration means adopting measures making no one worse off. For reasons I shall soon discuss, each of these rules is a better explication of equal consideration of each person's interests than is the utilitarian aggregative method , which in effect coll apses distinctions among persons. (2) Moreover, rather than construing individuals' "interests" as their actual (or rational) desires, and then putting them all on a par and measuring according to intensity, why not construe their interests lexically, in terms of a hierarchy of wants, where certain interests are, to use Scanlon's terms, more "urgent" than others, insofar as they are more basic needs? Equal consideration would then rule out satisfying less urgent interests of the majority of people until all means have been taken to satisfy everyone's more basic needs. (3) Finally, what is there about equal consideration, by itself, that requires maximizing anything? Why does it not require, as in David Gauthier's view, optimizing constraints on individual utility maximization? Or why does it not require sharing a distribution? The point is just that, to say we ought to give equal consideration to everyone's interests does not, by itself, imply much of anything about how we ought to proceed or what we ought to do. It is a purely formal principle, which requires certain added, independent assumptions, to yield any substantive conclusions. That (i) utilitarian procedures maximize is not a "by-product" of equal consideration. It stems from a particular conception of rationality that is explicitly incorporated into the procedure. That (2) individuals' interests are construed in terms of their (rational) desires or preferences, all of which are put on a par, stems from a conception of individual welfare or the human good: a person's good is defined subjectively, as what he wants or would want after due reflection. Finally (3), aggregation stems from the fact that, on the classical view, a single individual takes up everyone's desires as if they were his own, sympathetically identifies with them, and chooses to maximize his "individual" utility. Hare, for one, explicitly makes this move. Just as Rawls says of the classical view, Hare "extend[s] to society the principle of choice for one man, and then, to make this extension work, conflat[es] all persons into one through the imaginative acts of the impartial sympathetic spectator" (TJ, p. 27). If these are independent premises incorporated into the justification of utilitarianism and its decision procedure, then maximizing aggregate utility cannot be a "by-product" of a procedure that gives equal consideration to everyone's interests. Instead, it defines what that procedure is. If anything is a by- product here, it is the appeal to equal consideration. Utilitarians appeal to impartiality in order to extend a method of individual practical rationality so that it may be applied to society as a whole (cf. TJ, pp. 26-27). Impartiality, combined with sympathetic identification, allows a hypothetical observer to experience the desires of others as if they were his own, and compare alternative courses of action according to their conduciveness to a single maximand, made possible by equal consideration and sympathy. The significant fact is that, in this procedure, appeals to equal consideration have nothing to do with impartiality between persons. What is really being given equal consideration are desires or experiences of the same magnitude. That these are the desires or experiences of separate person s (or, for that matter, of some other sentient being) is simply an incidental fact that has no substantive effect on utilitarian calculations. This becomes apparent from the fact that we can more accurately describe the utilitarian principle in terms of giving, not equal consideration to each person's interests, but instead equal consideration to equally intense interests, no matter where they occur. Nothing is lost in this redescription, and a great deal of clarity is gained. It is in this sense that persons enter into utilitarian calculations only incidentally. Any mention of them can be dropped without loss of the crucial information one needs to learn how to apply utilitarian procedures. This indicates what is wrong with the common claim that utilitarians emphasize procedural equality and fairness among persons, not substantive equality and fairness in results. On the contrary, utilitarianism, rightly construed, emphasizes neither procedural nor substantive equality among persons. Desires and experiences, not persons, are the proper objects of equal concern in utilitarian procedures. Having in effect read persons out of the picture at the procedural end, before decisions on distributions even get underway, it is little wonder that utilitarianism can result in such substantive inequalities. What follows is that utilitarian appeals to democracy and the democratic value of equality are misleading. In no sense do utilitarians seek to give persons equal concern and respect. Policy decisions directed at maintaining human survival through whatever means will encourage genocide, war, and the destruction of moral values Callahan 73 – Co-Founder and former director of The Hastings Institute, PhD in philosophy from Harvard University (Daniel, “The Tyranny of Survival”, p 91-93) The value of survival could not be so readily abused were it not for its evocative power. But abused it has been. In the name of survival, all manner of social and political evils have been committed against the rights of individuals, including the right to life. The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades fueled the drive of militarists for ever-larger defense budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs . During World War II, native Japanese-Americans were herded, without due process of law, to detention camps. This policy was later upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) in the general context that a threat to national security can justify acts otherwise blatantly unjustifiable. The survival of the Aryan race was one of the official legitimations of Nazism . Under the banner of survival, the government of South Africa imposes a ruthless apartheid, heedless of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war has seen one of the greatest of the many absurdities tolerated in the name of survival: the destruction of villages in order to save them. But it is not only in a political setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F. Skinner offers in Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival. For Jacques Monod, in Chance and Necessity, survival requires that we overthrow almost every known religious, ethical and political system. In genetics, the survival of the gene pool has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic traits from marrying and bearing children. Some have even suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided medical efforts to find means by which those suffering from such common genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal life, and thus procreate even more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul Ehrlich, whose works have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to contemplate governmentally enforced abortions and a denial of food to surviving populations of nations which have not enacted population-control policies. For all these reasons it is possible to counterpoise over against the need for survival a "tyranny of survival." There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to inflict on another for sake of survival, no rights, liberties or dignities which it is not ready to suppress. It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger when survival is falsely and manipulatively invoked. Dictators never talk about their aggressions, but only about the need to defend the fatherland to save it from destruction at the hands of its enemies. But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and values. The potential tyranny survival as value is that it is capable, if not treated sanely, of wiping out all other values. Survival can become an obsession and a disease, provoking a destructive single-mindedness that will stop at nothing. We come here to the fundamental moral dilemma. If, both biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all human achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to life—then how will it be possible to honor and act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying everything in human beings which makes them worthy of survival. To put it more strongly, if the price of survival is human degradation, then there is no moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure that survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories. Yet it would be the defeat of all defeats if, because human beings could not properly manage their need to survive, they succeeded in not doing so. Utilitarianism destroys value to life by forcing the individual to take risks on a cost-benefit basis in an effort to increase overall utility of an entity, while demoralizing the individual’s own system of values Schroeder 86 – Professor of Law at Duke (Christopher H., Prof of Law at Duke, “Rights Against Risks,”, April, Columbia Law Review, pp. 495-562, http://www.jstor.org/pss/1122636) From the individual's point of view, the balancing of costs and benefits that utilitarianism endorses renders the status of any individual risk bearer profoundly insecure. A risk bearer cannot determine from the kind of risk being imposed on him whether it is impermissible or not. The identical risk may be justified if necessary to avoid a calamity and unjustified if the product of an act of profitless carelessness, but the nature and extent of the underlying benefits of the risky action are fre quently unknown to the risk bearer so that he cannot know whether or not he is being wronged. Furthermore, even when the gain that lies behind the risk is well- known, the status of a risk bearer is insecure because individuals can justifiably be inflicted with ever greater levels of risk in conjunction with increasing gains. Certainly, individual risk bearers may be entitled to more protection if the risky action exposes many others to the same risk, since the likelihood that technological risks will cause greater harm increases as more and more people experience that risk. This makes the risky action less likely to be justifiable. Once again, however, that insight seems scant comfort to an individual, for it reinforces the realization that, standing alone, he does not count for much. A strategy of weighing gains against risks thus renders the status of any specific risk victim substantially contingent upon the claims of others, both those who may share his victim status and those who stand to gain from the risky activity. The anxiety to preserve some fundamental place for the individual that cannot be overrun by larger social considerations underlies what H.L.A. Hart has aptly termed the "distinctively modern criticism of utilitarianism,"58 the criticism that, despite its famous slogan, "everyone [is] to count for one,"59 utilitarianism ultimately denies each individual a primary place in its system of values. Various versions of utilitarian ism evaluate actions by the consequences of those actions to maximize happiness, the net of pleasure over pain, or the satisfaction of desires.60 Whatever the specific formulation, the goal of maximizing some mea sure of utility obscures and diminishes the status of each individual. It reduces the individual to a conduit, a reference point that registers the appropriate "utiles," but does not count for anything independent of his monitoring function.61 It also produces moral requirements that can trample an individual, if necessary, to maximize utility, since once the net effects of a proposal on the maximand have been taken into account, the individual is expendable. Counting pleasure and pain equally across individuals is a laudable proposal, but counting only plea sure and pain permits the grossest inequities among individuals and the trampling of the few in furtherance of the utility of the many. In sum, utilitarianism makes the status of any individual radically contingent. The individual's status will be preserved only so long as that status con tributes to increasing total utility. Otherwise, the individual can be discarded.

The only way to preserve individualism is to allow all persons to have the right to own themselves regardless of any negative consequentialist impacts Schroeder 86 – Professor of Law at Duke (Christopher H., Prof of Law at Duke, “Rights Against Risks,”, April, Columbia Law Review, pp. 495-562, http://www.jstor.org/pss/1122636) 2. Liberal Theories in the "Rights" Tradition. A second group of theories avoids the modern criticism of utilitarianism by making the individual central . Contemporary theorists as diverse as John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Richard Epstein, Charles Fried, and Ronald Dworkin continue a tradition variously described as the Kantian, natural rights, or " rights" tradition.62 They all define the requirements of justice in terms of recognizing and preserving the essential characteristics of individuals as free and autonomous moral agents.63 In this approach, the individual is defined prior to articulating the terms under which that individual can be acted upon or interacted with, and those terms are consequently specified so as to protect and preserve what is essential to the individual. In this context, rights have been called "trumps" since they constrain what society can do to the individual.64 These theories all aspire to make the individual more secure than he is under utilitarianism . In the rights tradition, the crucial criteria for assessing risks derive from the impact of those risks on risk victims, and the criteria are defined independently of the benefits flowing from risk creation. To be plausible, such a program cannot totally prohibit risk creation, but the ostensible advantage of this program over utilitarianism is that risk creation is circumscribed by criteria exclusively derived from considerations of the integrity of the individual, not from any balancing or weighing process.65 The root idea is that nonconsensual risks are violations of "individual entitlements to personal security and autonomy."66 This idea seems highly congruent with the ideology of environmentalism expressed in our national legislation regulating technological risk. Indeed, two scholars have recently suggested a modern rendering of Kant's categorical imperative: "All rational persons have a right not to be used without their consent even for the benefit of others."67 If imposing risk amounts to using another, this tradition seems to be the place to look to secure the status of the individual. Case – 2AC Abolition Solvency Abolition is a gradual process, that will transform criminal law and people’s livelihoods Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf If prison abolition is conceptualized as an immediate and indiscriminate¶ opening of prison doors—that is, the imminent physical elimination of all structures¶ of incarceration— rejection of abolition is perhaps warranted . But abolition¶ may be understood instead as a gradual project of decarceration , in which radically¶ different legal and institutional regulatory forms supplant criminal law enforcement.¶ These institutional alternatives include meaningful justice reinvestment to¶ strengthen the social arm of the state and improve human welfare ; decriminalizing¶ less serious infractions ; improved design of spaces and products to reduce opportunities for¶ offending; urban redevelopment and “greening” projects ; proliferating¶ restorative forms of redress;

and creating both safe harbors for individuals at risk¶ of or fleeing violence and

alternative livelihoods for persons otherwise subject to¶ criminal law enforcement. When abolition is conceptualized in these terms—as¶ a transformative goal of gradual decarceration and positive regulatory substitution¶ wherein penal regulation is recognized as morally unsustainable— then inattention¶ to abolition in criminal law scholarship and reformist discourses comes into¶ focus as a more troubling absence .16 Further, the rejection of abolition as a horizon¶ for reform mistakenly assumes that reformist critiques concern only the occasional,¶ peripheral excesses of imprisonment and prison-backed policing rather¶ than more fundamentally impugning the core operations of criminal law enforcement,¶ and therefore requiring a departure from prison-backed criminal¶ regulation to other regulatory frameworks.

Even if abolition has problems, its important to image to set the agenda for decarcerative politics Angela Y. Davis 03, Professor of Feminist Studies at University of CA Santa Cruz, 2003, “Are Prisons Obsolete?”, http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp- content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf Creating agendas of decarceration and broadly casting the net of alternatives helps us to do the ideological work of pulling apart the conceptual link between crime and punishment. This more nuanced understanding of the social role of the punishment system requires us to give up our usual way of thinking about punishment as an inevitable consequence of crime. We would recognize that "punishment" does not follow from "crime" in the neat and logical sequence offered by discourses that insist on the justice of imprisonment, but rather punishment —primarily through imprisonment (and sometimes death)—is linked to the agendas of politicians , the profit drive of corporations, and media representations of crime. Imprisonment is associated with the racialization of those most likely to be punished. It is associated with their class and , as we have seen, gender structures the punishment system as well. If we insist that abolitionist alternatives trouble these relationships, that they strive to disarticulate crime and punishment, race and punishment, class and punishment, and gender and punishment, then our focus must not rest only on the prison system as an isolated institution but must also be directed at all the social relations that support the permanence of the prison . An attempt to create a new conceptual terrain for imagining alternatives to imprisonment involves t he ideological work of questioning why "criminals" have been constituted as a class and, indeed, a class of human beings undeserving of the civil and human rights accorded to others. Radical criminologists have long pointed out that the category "lawbreakers" is far greater than the category of individuals who are deemed criminals since, many point out, almost all of us have broken the law at one time or another. Even President Bill Clinton admitted that he had smoked marijuana at one time, insisting, though, that he did not inhale. However, acknowledged disparities in the intensity of police surveillance—as indicated by the present-day currency of the term "racial profiling" which ought to cover far more territory than "driving while black or brown"—account in part for racial and class-based disparities in arrest and imprisonment rates. Thus, if we are willing to take seriously the consequences of a racist and class-biased justice system, we will reach the conclusion that enormous numbers of people are in prison simply because they are, for example, black Chicano, Vietnamese, Native American or poor, regardless of their ethnic background. They are sent to prison , not so much because of the crimes they may have indeed committed, but largely because their communities have been criminalized . Thus, programs for decriminalization will not only have to address specific activities that have been criminalized—such as drug use and sex work—but also criminalized populations and communities. It is against the backdrop of these more broadly conceived abolitionist alternatives that it makes sense to take up the question of radical transformations within the existing justice system. Thus, aside from minimizing, through various strategies, the kinds of behaviors that will bring people into contact with the police and justice systems, there is the question of how to treat those who assault the rights and bodies of others. Many organizations and individuals both in the United States and other countries offer alternative modes of making justice. In limited instances, some governments have attempted to implement alternatives that range from conflict resolution to restorative or reparative justice. Such scholars as Herman Bianchi have suggested that crime needs to be defined in terms of tort and, instead of criminal law, should be reparative law. In his words, "(The lawbreaker) is thus no longer an evil-minded man or woman, but simply a debtor, a liable person whose human duty is to take responsibility for his or her acts, and to assume the duty of repair. AT: State Prisons Alt Cause Federal prisons are the largest proportion of prisoners in the US Pew Trusts 15, Federal Prison System Shows Dramatic Long-Term Growth: Policy decisions contribute to steep rise in inmate population and costs, February 27, 2015, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact- sheets/2015/02/federal-prison-system-shows-dramatic-long-term-growth From 1980 to 2013, the number of offenders incarcerated in federal prisons increased from approximately 24,000 to more than 215,000, making the federal system the largest in the nation .1 Policy choices contributed significantly to this expansion as lawmakers added criminal laws to the books, lengthened sentences, and abolished parole.2 To accommodate the growing inmate population, the number of federal prisons nearly tripled, driving a surge in corrections spending.3 Taxpayers spent almost as much on federal prisons in 2013—$6.7 billion—as they spent to fund the entire U.S. Department of Justice in 1980, after adjusting for inflation.4 Despite these expenditures, recent data show that a third of all offenders who leave federal prisons under community supervision return to custody for violating the terms of their release.5 More Util Owning oneself is a moral imperative – utilitarianism imposes interpersonal obligations to society, which destroys morality Freeman 94 – Avalon Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. Harvard University, J.D. University of North Carolina (Samuel, “Utilitarianism, Deontology, and the Priority of Right,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 4, Autumn, pp. 313-349, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265463) Kymlicka distinguishes two interpretations of utilitarianism: teleological and egalitarian. Ac cording to Rawls's teleological interpretation, the "fundamental goal" (LCC, p. 33) of utilitarianism is not persons, but the goodness of states of affairs. Duty is defined by what best brings about these states of affairs. " [M] aximizing the good is primary, and we count individuals equally only because that maximizes value. Our primary duty isn't to treat people as equals, but to bring about valuable states of affairs" (LCC, p. 27). It is difficult to see , Kymlicka says, how this reading of utilitarianism can be viewed as a moral theory. Morality, in our everyday view at least, is a matter of interpersonal obligations-the obligations we owe to each other. But to whom do we owe the duty of maximizing utility? Surely not to the impersonal ideal spectato r . . . for he doesn't exist. Nor to the maximally valuable state of affairs itself, for states of affairs don't have moral claims." (LCC, p. 28-29) Kymlicka says, "This form of utilitarianism does not merit serious consideration as a political morality" (LCC, p. 29). Suppose we see utilitarianism differently, as a theory whose "fundamental principle" is "to treat people as equals" (LCC, p. 29). On this egalitarian reading, utilitarianism is a procedure for aggregating individual interests and desires, a procedure for making social choices, specifying which trade-offs are acceptable. It's a moral theory which purports to treat people as equals, with equal concern and respect. It does so by counting everyone for one, and no one for more than one. (LCC, p. 25) Utilitarianism promotes inequity and inherently discriminates against minority like slavery Odell, 04 – University of Illinois is an Associate Professor of Philosophy (Jack, Ph.D., “On Consequentialist Ethics,” Wadsworth, Thomson Learning, Inc., pp. 98- 103) A classic objection to both act and rule utilitarianism has to do with inequity, and is related to the kind of objection raised by Rawls, which I will consider shortly. Suppose we have two fathers-Andy and Bob. Suppose further that they are alike in all relevant respects, both have three children, make the same salary, have the same living expenses, put aside the same amount in savings, and have left over each week fifteen dollars. Suppose that every week Andy and Bob ask themselves what they are going to do with this extra money, and Andy decides anew each week (AU) to divide it equally among his three children, or he makes a decision to always follow the rule (RU) that each child should receive an equal percentage of the total allowance money. Suppose further that each of his children receive five degrees of pleasure from this and no pain. Suppose on the other hand, that Bob, who strongly favors his oldest son, Bobby, decides anew each week (AU) to give all of the allowance money to Bobby, and nothing to the other two, and that he instructs Bobby not to tell the others, or he makes a decision to follow the rule (RU) to always give the total sum to Bobby. Suppose also that Bobby gets IS units of pleasure from his allowance and that his unsuspecting siblings feel no pain. The end result of the actions of both fathers is the same-IS units of pleasure. Most, if not all, of us would agree that although Andy's conduct is exemplary, Bob's is culpable. Nevertheless, according to both AU and RU the fathers in question are morally equal. Neither father is more or less exemplary or culpable than the other. I will refer to the objection implicit in this kind of example as (H) and state it as: ' (H) Both act and rule utilitarianism violate the principle of just distribution. What Rawls does is to elaborate objection (H). Utilitarianism, according to Rawls, fails to appreciate the importance of distributive justice, and that by doing so it makes a mockery of the concept of "justice ." As I pointed out when I discussed Russell's views regarding partial goods, satisfying the interests of a majority of a given population while at the same time thwarting the interests of the minority segment of that same population (as occurs in societies that allow slavery) can maximize the general good, and do so even though the minority group may have to suffer great cruelties. Rawls argues that the utilitarian commitment to maximize the good in the world is due to its failure to ''take seriously the distinction between persons."· One person can be forced to give up far too much to insure the maximization of the good, or the total aggregate satisfaction, as was the case for those young Aztec women chosen by their society each year to be sacrificed to the Gods for the welfare of the group. **Other Possible Advantages Targeting the homeless The homeless are targeted by the Prison Industrial Complex--- their circumstances are abused by the police to constantly arrest them. Critical resistance 04, abolitionist website, 2004, “Information Sheets”, http://criticalresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ab-Toolkit-Part-2.pdf THERE ARE MANY THINGS THAT THREATEN THE SAFETY OF THE HOMELESS. Not having a reliable place to live creates many of those problems. Without a place to rest or keep clean, it's hard to meet the basic expectations for holding a job. Homeless people are forced to sleep, cook, use the bathroom, and store possessions in public. Homeless people are left open to having these activities criminalized. More and more, our society uses police, prisons, and courts to punish the homeless. People's basic needs, and the causes of homelessness, all go ignored. Advocates for the homeless can work toward abolition by seeing the PIC as getting in the way of people's safety and basic needs . .Housing costs are way too high for many people, including the working poor. Minimum wage income is not enough to cover fair market rent in any city or county in the US. (See the "Rental Housing" report). . A study found that out of 57 cities surveyed , not a single one had enough shelter beds for all of the homeless. . Not having a mailing address makes it hard to register to vote, receive government benefits , or apply for a job. . Homeless people are punished for non-harmful activities like loitering. These "quality of life" laws are mostly enforced against homeless people. Tourists drinking in public, or napping on a blanket in a park probably wouldn't be arrested. But a homeless person sleeping on a piece of cardboard probably would be. 'In one year, 43,000 people were cited for breaking "quality of life" laws in San Francisco. People who are cited usually have to pay a fine. If they can't pay the fine, they are put in jail. .Homeless people in Baltimore, for example, spend an average of 35 days per year in jail . 'Because some homeless people end up having criminal records, they have an even harder time finding housing and jobs. Targeting queer people Queer people are routinely harassed by police officers---their identities are abused both by guards and other prisoners. Andrew Cohen 13, fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, legal analyst, and contributing editor at The Atlantic, 12-14-13, “Government Watchdog: We Have a Growing Federal Prison 'Crisis'”, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/government-watchdog-we- have-a-growing-federal-prison-crisis/282341/ QUEER PEOPLE FACE HIGHER SURVEILLANCE AND REPRESSION BASED ON THEIR ACTIONS AND APPEAR- ANCES. Some queer people are not safe at home and end up spend ing more of their time on the street, which can mean facing the threat of police harassment every day. For queer people who are locked up, their identities are abused and denied. All of the gender "cages" in our society, mixed with surveillance , policing, and imprisonment , put queer people at risk of violence . The risks are even higher for queer youth, queers of color, queer sex workers, transgendered people, low- income queers, and other marginalized queers. Abolition would mean putting an end to tracking people's bodies and behavior based on gender and sexuality. .Many queer youth are denied a caring home because of their sexuality. They are put in foster care homes that are hostile, where they often experience violence. Or they are forced onto the streets. '100% of queer youth in group homes have experienced heterosexist verbal abuse in their foster care. 70% have experience physical violence there. 035-50% of homeless youth are queer. ' "Quality of life" laws also target queer youth . They are fined or jailed just for being outside . 'Policing and surveillance often target public displays of affection by queers . Cops often read transgendered people as sex workers. '49% of attacks on transgendered people in San Francisco are committed by police. .Prisoners are forced into living conditions segregated "male" and "female." . A prisoner who doesn't identify with either of those gender label s, or who identifies with a gender that guards and police don't agree "match" the prisoner's genitals, is often forced into solitary confinement or a cell with people of different genders . However prisoners are classified, it's not based on their choice, or with concern for their safety. 'People using hormones are often denied access , or regular access, to hormones in prison. 'Queer people in prison are at high risk of verbal and physical abuse, from guards and other prisoners . Social/Enviro problems Prisons are also social and environmental catastrophes---purposely built in poor communities of color, they use water and land, only to give back sewage and hazardous chemicals. Andrew Cohen 13, fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, legal analyst, and contributing editor at The Atlantic, 12-14-13, “Government Watchdog: We Have a Growing Federal Prison 'Crisis'”, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/government-watchdog-we- have-a-growing-federal-prison-crisis/282341/ ENVIRONMENI'AL RACISM CAN MEAN NOT ENFORCING ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS, when people of color are the ones mostly harmed. It can also mean choosing to build toxic waste disposal sites only in communities of color. Communities of color and poor communities suffer an unfair number of environmentally destructive land uses-- land uses that take from the community but don't give back to it. Prisons don't only harm the communities where prisoners come from. Prisons are also environmental and social disasters for the towns where prisons are built . Part of abolishing the PIC also means building communities that have the power to decide how their resources are best used. Many US states build most prisons where the poor and people of color live . .Communities are often shut out of the process of deciding whether a prison should be built in their town. 'In Mendota California, the Federal Bureau of Prisons refused to translate its 1000 page environmental impact report into Spanish. 8696 of Mendota residents are native Spanish speakers. IT's IMPORTANT THAT WE UNDERSTAND WHY PRISONS MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS. It's not because of the people who are locked inside. It's not because of the prisoners' family members (who rarely move to the prison town anyway). It's because prison buildings themselves are environmental haz- ards. . Prisons use up scarce water resources and create huge amounts of sewage waste. 'To dispose of waste products, boilers in prisons can burn coal and diesel. These release the same chemicals as hazardous waste incinerators. .Prison guards usually commute to the prison from dozens of miles away. This creates huge amounts of air pollution. This is one of the reasons why the San Joaquin Valley in California (which has several prisons) surpassed Ins Angeles as having the second wol$t air in the country. 'Prisons use up land that was once used to grow food. This valuable land no longer creates jobs or public resources. Financially inefficient The Federal Bureau of Prisons is financially inefficient---it has received an increase in inmates and a decrease in funding Andrew Cohen 13, fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, legal analyst, and contributing editor at The Atlantic, 12-14-13, “Government Watchdog: We Have a Growing Federal Prison 'Crisis'”, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/government-watchdog-we- have-a-growing-federal-prison-crisis/282341/ The first part of the prison crisis is financial and the math behind it is relatively simple: the number of federal inmates has increased dramatically over the past few years while the government funding available to safely house those federal inmates has decreased. " It's a zero sum gam e ," Horowitz says. " Every dollar spent on prisons is a dollar that is going to come from somewhere else in the Departm ent. That forces leadership to look hard at what tools it has."¶ From the report:¶ After enjoying an increase in its discretionary budget from $21.5 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2001 to $28.9 billion in FY 2011, the Department’s discretionary budget decreased in FY 2012 to $28.3 billion, and by 10 percent in FY 2013 to $25.5 billion. During this same period, the prison population in the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) facilities grew from about 157,000 inmates in FY 2001 to about 219,000 inmates presently. Empirics prove---incarceration is vastly inefficient and costly. Louis Michael Seidman 10, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center, 2010, “Hyper-Incarceration and Strategies of Disruption: Is There a Way Out?”, http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1140&context=fwps_papers A deficiency of the economic model is that it seems descriptively inaccurate, or at least quite incomplete. Anyone who has studied the politics of crime control knows that it is driven at least as much by anger and fear as by careful cost-benefit calculations.16 Policy makers can talk openly about the costs and benefits of, say, increasing the speed limit on highways, but no one says publicly that there is an optimal level of rape and murder. It is not surprising then, that our actual policies depart substantially from the results we would attain if we focused solely on economic efficiency . For example, Bruce Western estimates that from 1993 to 2001 , increases in incarceration rates produced a 2 to 5 percent drop in serious crime at a cost of $53 billion.17 This figure represents just the direct economic costs of imprisonment. It includes none of the huge costs to individual lives and communities imposed by our gargantuan imprisonment program. Whether any particular drop in crime is worth the cost obviously depends on how one values crime avoidance, but almost everyone would say that this is an exorbitant price to pay for relatively insignificant benefits. Of course, not everyone agrees with Western’s analysis,18 practice of incarcerating superannuated prisoners who continue to serve very long sentences into their dotage involves a great deal of waste.19 Topicality Prisons = Surveillance

Surveillance means to keep watch over prisoners and prisons Random House Dictionary 15, accessed at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/surveillance on 7/6/15 surveillance noun 1.a watch kept over a person, group, etc., especially over a suspect , prisoner, or the like: The suspects were under police surveillance. 2. continuous observation of a place, person, group, or ongoing activity in order to gather information: video cameras used for covert surveillance. See also electronic surveillance. 3. attentive observation, as to oversee and direct someone or something: increased surveillance of patients with chronic liver disease.

Prisoners are constantly under surveillance, both in and out of prison Timothy J. Flanagan, 95, PRESIDENT AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, FRAMINGHAM STATE UNIVERSITY, 4/6/1995, “Long-Term Imprisonment”,

The prison context affords very little privacy, and in Durham the women are confined together, for long periods at a time, in a small unit that permits low opportunities for seclusion. As in other prisons , their activities are also under constant surveillance by staf f. Of particular concern to the women was the censorship of all mail , both in and out of the prison, and the close supervision of visits. Together, these measures were said to severely inhibit meaningful communication with family and friends and to deny the women any opportunity to reveal their emotions to those closest to them. CI- Fed Prisons = Custody

Counter-interpretation: a. Surveillance is keeping people in custody Collins English Dictionary 12, accessed at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/surveillance on 7/6/15 surveillance noun 1. close observation or supervision maintained over a person, group, etc, esp one in custody or under suspicion

b. Federal prisons are places where people confined for continuous custody Bureau of Justice Statistics no date, “Terms & Definitions: State And Federal Prisoners And Prison Facilities Custody,” http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tdtp&tid=13 To have custody of a prisoner, a state or the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) must physically hold that person in one of its facilities. A locality, state, or the BOP may hold inmates over whom a different government maintains jurisdiction. Custody count The number of offenders in custody. To have custody of a prisoner, a state or the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) must physically hold that person in one of its facilities. A locality, state, or the BOP may have custody of a prisoner over whom a different government maintains jurisdiction. Design capacity The number of inmates that planners or architects intended for the facility. Federal prisons Prison facilities run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP ). Prisoners housed in these facilities are under the legal authority of the federal government. This excludes private facilities under exclusive contract with BOP. Imprisoned population The population of inmates confined in prison or other facilities under the jurisdiction of the state or Federal Bureau of Prisons. Imprisonment rate The number of prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction sentenced to more than one year, per 100,000 U.S. residents. Incarcerated population Incarcerated population is the population of inmates confined in a prison or a jail. This may also include halfway-houses, bootcamps, weekend programs, and other facilities in which individuals are locked up overnight. Institutional corrections Institutional corrections refers to those persons housed in secure correctional facilities. There are many different types of correctional facilities, operated by different government entities. Local jails are operated by county or municipal authorities, and typically hold offenders for short periods ranging from a single day to a year. Prisons serve as long-term confinement facilities and are only run by the 50 state governments and the federal Bureau of Prisons. Private correctional facilities also operate under contracts for a wide variety of local, state and federal agencies. Other correctional facilities are operated by special jurisdictions such as the U.S. Armed Forces, U.S. territories and federal agencies such as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Jurisdiction Jurisdiction generally refers to a unit of government or to the legal authority to exercise governmental power. In corrections, it refers to the government which has legal authority over an inmate (state or federal). Prisoners under a given state's jurisdiction may be housed in another state or local correctional facility. Jurisdiction count Includes prisoners under legal authority of state or federal correctional authorities who are housed in prison facilities (e.g., prisons, penitentiaries and correctional institutions; boot camps; prison farms; reception, diagnostic, and classification centers; release centers, halfway houses, and road camps; forestry and conservation camps; vocational training facilities; prison hospitals; and drug and alcohol treatment facilities for prisoners), regardless of which state they are physically held in. This number also includes prisoners who are temporarily absent (less than 30 days), out to court, or on work release; housed in local jails, private facilities, and other states' or federal facilities; serving a sentence for two jurisdictions at the same time. This count excludes prisoners held in a state or federal facility for another state or the Federal Bureau of Prisons. However, prisoners housed in another state and under the legal authority of the governing state are included. Movement In corrections, a movement refers to an admission or a release from a status such as prisoner, parolee, or probationer. Unless specifically noted, a transfer between facilities does not count as a movement. Operational capacity The number of inmates that can be accommodated based on a facility's staff, existing programs, and services. Parole Parole refers to criminal offenders who are conditionally released from prison to serve the remaining portion of their sentence in the community. Prisoners may be released to parole by a parole board decision (discretionary release/discretionary parole), according to provisions of a statute (mandatory release/mandatory parole), through other types of post-custody conditional supervision, or as the result of a sentence to a term of supervised release. In the federal system, a term of supervised release is a sentence to a fixed period of supervision in the community that follows a sentence to a period of incarceration in federal prison, both of which are ordered at the time of sentencing by a federal judge. Parolees can have a number of different supervision statuses including active supervision, which means they are required to regularly report to a parole authority in person, by mail, or by telephone. Some parolees may be on an inactive status which means they are excluded from regularly reporting, and that could be due to a number of reasons. For instance, some may receive a reduction in supervision, possibly due to compliance or meeting all required conditions before the parole sentence terminates, and therefore may be moved from an active to inactive status. Other supervision statues include parolees who only have financial conditions remaining, have absconded, or who have active warrants. Parolees are also typically required to fulfill certain conditions and adhere to specific rules of conduct while in the community. Failure to comply with any of the conditions can result in a return to incarceration. Prison Compared to jail facilities, prisons are longer-term facilities owned by a state or by the Federal Government. Prisons typically hold felons and persons with sentences of more than a year; however, the sentence length may vary by state. Six states (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Delaware, Alaska, and Hawaii) have an integrated correctional system that combines jails and prisons. There are a small number of private prisons, facilities that are run by private prison corporations whose services and beds are contracted out by state or federal governments. Prisoners Prisoners are inmates confined in long-term facilities run by the state or federal government or private agencies. They are typically felons who have received a sentence of incarceration of 1 year or more. (Sentence length may vary by state because a few states have one integrated prison system in which both prison and jail inmates are confined in the same types of facilities.) PTX - AFF Plan NOW The time is NOW, Obama is already speaking about the issue of prisons Angela Davis, 14, leading advocate for prison abolition, a professor emerita at University of California, Santa Cruz, and the subject of the recent documentary, "Free Angela and All Political Prisoners," 3/6/14 “Angela Davis on Prison Abolition, the War on Drugs and Why Social Movements Shouldn’t Wait on Obama”, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/6/angela_davis_on_prison_abolition_the

ANGELA DAVIS: Well, yes. I think that this is a pivotal moment . There are openings. And I think it’s very important to point out that people have been struggling over these issues for years and for decades. This is also a problematic moment. And those of us who identify as prison abolitionists, as opposed to prison reformers, make the point that oftentimes reforms create situations where mass incarceration becomes even more entrenched; and so, therefore, we have to think about what in the long run will produce decarceratio n, fewer people behind bars, and hopefully, eventually, in the future, the possibility of imagining a landscape without prisons, where other means are used to address issues of harm, where social problems, such as illiteracy and poverty, do not lead vast numbers of people along a trajectory that leads to prison.¶ JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’m wondering, in term—the first term of President Obama was often referred to by some through the myth of post-racial America, represented by the election of President Obama. But even he has shied away, until recently, dealing with some of the racial inequities of our system, especially the prison system. I’m wondering if you can see a movement or transformation in the president himself in how he deals with some of these issues?¶ ANGELA DAVIS: Well, this is his second term. He really has nothing to lose . And it really is about time that he began to address what is one of the most critical issues in this country . It’s pretty unfortunate that Obama has waited until now to speak out, but it’s good that he is speaking out. And I think we can use this opportunity to perhaps achieve some important victories.¶ Plan Popular Bipartisan support for decarceration, Republicans have been getting on board with the Dems Ovetta Wiggins, 6-18, reporter for the Washington Post, 6/18/15, “How Republicans are experimenting with criminal justice reform”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/how-republicans-are- experimenting-with-criminal-justice-reform/2015/06/18/a26e04fa-12ab-11e5-9518- f9e0a8959f32_story.html

Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) rattled off numbers for the mostly white, mostly older crowd of Maryland Republicans, explaining how blacks are arrested for marijuana offenses in Baltimore at a higher rate than whites.¶ “If you do surveys, the statistics are pretty close between black and white marijuana use,” the Republican presidential hopeful said at a state party fundraiser last week. “I’m not saying it’s racism. Many of the officials [in Baltimore] are black. So it’s not racism. But something is wrong with the war on drugs when we decide to lock people up for five, 10, 15 years for making mistakes.”¶ The crowd broke into applause.¶ As the crime rate falls and the number of high-profile cases in which police officers are accused of racial bias escalates, Republicans increasingly are joining what had long been a Democratic conversation: how to reduce the size of the prison population and help ex-offenders turn their lives around.¶ In Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan this year became the latest Republican state leader to back bills intended to reduce recidivism and help ex-offenders find jobs. And while Hogan also vetoed a bill that would have expanded felon voting rights, advocates say he and other Republicans have shown a willingness to rethink long-held theories about how to reduce crime.¶ “There’s a change in climate in criminal justice reform,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a national advocacy group that has worked to change the way Americans view crime and punishment.¶ The shift by Republicans is largely motivated by costs, Democrats say. Fiscally conservative Republicans see prison expenses as a drain on strained budgets and are starting to work with Democrats to find less costly approaches.¶ The declining crime rate, Mauer said, has made the debate “less emotional and less political” for lawmakers.¶

The “stars are aligned” -- the time for reducing incarceration rates is NOW -- bipartisan support for prison reform Russel Berman, 7-10, a senior associate editor at The Atlantic, where he covers political news. He was previously a congressional reporter forThe Hill and a Washington correspondent for The New York Sun, 7/10/15, “Is This Obama's Moment for Criminal-Justice Reform?”, http://www.govexec.com/management/2015/07/obamas-moment-criminal-justice- reform/117481/

Yet despite no shortage of proposals for reform in recent years, Congress has done virtually nothing. That may, finally, be about to change, as an emboldened President Obama eyes what might be the last major addition to his domestic legacy in the White House.¶ Speaking at a press conference last week, the president was asked how he might follow the remarkable string of victories he earned in late June, which included a congressional win on trade, a pair of legacy-setting Supreme Court decisions, and a widely-praised eulogy in Charleston. He ticked off several unchecked boxes on his economic agenda, including a major infrastructure bill and enactment of his proposals to boost job training and access to community college. But the big-ticket item Obama mentioned that actually holds the most promise in the Republican Congress is a long-awaited overhaul of the nation’s criminal-justice system. “We’ve seen some really interesting leadership from some unlikely Republican legislators very sincerely concerned about making progress there,” the president observed.¶ He’s right. The bipartisan coalition pushing to reduce incarceration rates in the world’s most crowded prison system has been building for years, bringing together ardent foes like the Koch Brothers and the ACLU, and Rand Paul and Cory Booker, among others. Various proposals to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug crimes, and to keep young, nonviolent offenders from receiving long, crippling prison sentences have circulated for a while without going anywhere. Yet that movement is cresting now, providing what lawmakers and advocates say is a genuine opportunity to enact legislation before the end of the year. “I am very optimistic that we will get something done. If you had told me a couple years ago, I would not have believed it,” said Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat who is not known as a congressional Pollyanna.¶ As usual, however, Cummings’s rosy view comes with a key caveat repeated by other advocates I interviewed: the looming presidential election. “I think the stars have aligned,” Cummings said. “I do believe, however, that if we don’t get it done now, I don’t know that the stars will align like this again.” Obama talked up the prospect of criminal-justice reform just a few days after lawmakers in the House unveiled the most ambitious and comprehensive proposal to modernize the system to date. Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that Obama was soon likely to commute the sentences of dozens of nonviolent drug offenders—an act of presidential clemency unprecedented in scope that would seek to galvanize the push for reform in Congress. Reform Popular Federal prison reform popular, Horowitz’s statement is enough to sway opposition to reform Andrew Cohen, 14, commentary editor of the Marshall Project, the legal analyst for 60 Minutes and CBS Radio News, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, 11/17/14, “Obama’s Prison Crisis”, https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/11/17/a-crisis-at-the-bureau-of-prisons- persists-says-doj-watchdog

Michael Horowitz , the Justice Department’s Inspector General, is nothing if not consistent. Last December , in his annual State-of-the-Department message, he warned of “growing” federal prison crisis . And now he is back, 50 weeks later in his same year-ender message, warning of a “persistent” crisis at the Bureau of Prisons consisting of two main parts. From his memorandum , released Monday morning:¶ First, despite a slight decrease in the total number of federal inmates in fiscal year (FY) 2014, the Department projects that the costs of the federal prison system will continue to increase in the years ahead, consuming a large share of the Department’s budget.¶ Second, federal prisons remain significantly overcrowded and therefore face a number of important safety and security issues.¶ These two sentences , I suspect , will drive a great deal of the coming political debate over criminal justice reform at the federal level. First, they represent a continuing failure on the part of the Justice Department (and Obama Administration) to reign in the Bureau of Prisons, a vast bureaucracy whose officials have been repeatedly warned by Congress (and the federal courts, for that matter) that they need to change the way they do business. Eric Holder has been an outspoken critic of the federal prison policies at issue here — and yet they, to use Horowitz’s word, “persist.” That’s on Holder — and also on BOP Director Charles Samuels.¶ Second , Horowitz’s warning ought to give cover to any politician (like Sen. Rand Paul, the Republican from Kentucky) who already is inclined to endorse sentencing reform and give pause to any politician (like Sen. Charles Grassley, the Republican from Iowa) who is not. There is very little room to spin the figures the Justice Department is tossing out here — and very little reason to accuse Horowitz of doing so. It is not a mystery, or a Washington parlor game, that the Justice Department budget is zero sum; that funds used to house a growing number of inmates are funds that cannot be used on other law enforcement priorities .¶ So let’s take the first Horowitz sentence first. The Bureau of Prison’s budget now ($6.9 billion) is nearly twice what it was ($3.8 billion) in 2000, Horowitz tells us, an increase at “almost twice the rate of growth of the rest of the Department.” Worse, he writes, even though federal prison officials have been warned that their part of the budget is draining funding away from other Justice Department programs (like those that support victims groups) they asked for more money this past budget cycle.¶ (Here is a handy online guide to inmates statistics in the federal system. As of last Thursday, the last updated figures, there are 213,461 federal inmates, or roughly 10 percent of the nation’s total number of prisoners, which most observers place at 2.2 million. Here is an interactive guide to incarceration at the state level. Many states have many of the same problems — costs, overcrowding, poor health care for inmates — we see in the federal system). Legislation Key Prisons are becoming increasingly expensive due to the growing population, and programs to decrease the expense are not effective- continued legislative reforms key Andrew Cohen, 14, commentary editor of the Marshall Project, the legal analyst for 60 Minutes and CBS Radio News, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, 11/17/14, “Obama’s Prison Crisis”, https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/11/17/a-crisis-at-the-bureau-of-prisons- persists-says-doj-watchdog

Horowitz didn’t mince words, either, about what is costing so much. The federal prison population is aging at a fast pace. “From FY 2009 to FY 2013, the population of sentenced inmates age 50 and over in BOP-managed facilities increased 25 percent, while the population of sentenced inmates under the age of 30 decreased by 16 percent,” he notes. As a result, “the cost for providing healthcare services to inmates increased 55 percent from FY 2006 to FY 2013.” And here is his kicker:¶ The BOP spent over $1 billion on inmate healthcare services in FY 2013, which nearly equaled the entire budget of the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).¶ And if it is not elderly prisoners it’s those who are sick. “ New prescription drug treatments, particularly for chronic hepatitis C (HCV), could exponentially increase costs in the coming years ,” Horowitz warns. “The BOP currently spends $6,600 per patient for a standard HCV treatment regimen. However, the treatment regimen newly approved by the Food and Drug Administration could cost an additional $20,000 to $40,000 per patient… meaning that the BOP could face additional costs for these patients of approximately $220 million to $440 million.”¶ What to do about all this? Horowitz says the Bureau of Prisons has to do more to release ill or elderly prisoners through the use of its Compassionate Release Program , which the Office of Inspector General determined in April 2013 was “poorly managed and implemented inconsistently.” Horowitz also says the Bureau of Prisons now must do more to release inmates back to their native countries through the International Prisoner Transfer Program, which the Inspector General determined in December 2011 was not being efficiently administered by federal prison officials.¶ Combine a renewed commitment to these existing programs with legislative and administrative sentencing reforms , Horowitz asserts, and the costs of federal prisons will begin to ease . What he is saying, year after year it seems, is that we need to make sure that fewer Americans are being sent to federal prison while sending home more quickly those who no longer need to be there. This is what Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, meant when he told me Monday afternoon that the policies that created these costs have been “disproven” and are “simply unjust.” Crime DA – AFF Recidivism high now

Prisoners are locked into a cycle of marginality that causes them to almost always be arrested after their release from prison. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf No wonder, then, that most people labeled felons find their way back into prison. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study , about 30 percent of released prisoners in its sample were rearrested within six months of release . 90 Within three years , nearly 68 percent were rearrested at least once for a new offense.91 Only a small minority are rearrested for violent crimes ; the vast majority are rearrested for property offenses, drug offenses, and offenses against the public order .92 For those released on probation or parole , the risks are especially high. They are subject to regular surveillance and monitoring by the police and may be stopped and searched (with or without their consent) for any reason or no reason at all. As a result, they are far more likely to be arrested (again) than those whose behavior is not subject to constant scrutiny by law enforcement. Probationers and parolees are at increased risk of arrest because their lives are governed by additional rules that do not apply to everyone else. Myriad restrictions on their travel and behavior (such as a prohibition on associating with other felons), as well as various requirements of probation and parole (such as paying fines and meeting with probation officers ), create opportunities for arrest. Violation of these special rules can land someone right back in prison . In fact, that is what happens a good deal of the time. The extraordinary increase in prison admissions due to parole and probation violations is due almost entirely to the War on Drugs . With respect to parole, in 1980, only 1 percent of all prison admissions were parole violators. Twenty years later, more than one third (35 percent) of prison admissions resulted from parole violations.93 To put the matter more starkly: About as many people were returned to prison for parole violations in 2000 as were admitted to prison in 1980 for all reasons.94 Of all parole violators returned to prison in 2000, only one-third were returned for a new conviction; two-thirds were returned for a technical violation such as missing appointments with a parole officer, failing to maintain employment, or failing a drug test.95 In this system of control, failing to cope well with one's exile status is treated like a crime . If you fail, after being released from prison with a criminal record—your personal badge of inferiority—to remain drug free, or if you fail to get a job against all the odds, or if you get depressed and miss an appointment with your parole officer (or if you cannot afford the bus fare to take you there), you can be sent right back to prison—where society apparently thinks millions of Americans belong. This disturbing phenomenon of people cycling in and out of prison, trapped by their secondclass status, has been described by Loic Wacquant as a "closed circuit of perpetual marginality ."96 Hundreds of thousands of people are released from prison every year, only to find themselves locked out of the mainstream society and economy. Most ultimately return to prison, sometimes for the rest of their lives. Others are released again, only to find themselves in precisely the circumstances they occupied before, unable to cope with the stigma of the prison label and their permanent pariah status. Only a massive overhaul in prison policy can end the cycle of suffering that a life behind bars introduces. Michelle Alexander 10, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010, “The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.”, http://www.kropfpolisci.com/racial.justice.alexander.pdf Reducing the amount of time people spend behind bars —by eliminating harsh mandatory minimums— will alleviate some of the unnecessary suffering caused by this system, but it will not disturb the closed circuit. Those labeled felons will continue to cycle in and out of prison, subject to perpetual surveillance by the police, and unable to integrate into the mainstream society and economy . Unless the number of people who are labeled felons is dramatically reduced ,- and unless the laws and policies that keep ex-offenders marginalized from the mainstream society and economy are eliminated, the system will continue to create and maintain an enormous undercaste. Empirics prove---the PIC only increases rates of recidivism--- releasing prisoners early has been found to decrease the reoccurrence of crime. Mark Morris, 76, editor of “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists”, part of the Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976, “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionsists”, http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapter2.shtml

One commonly cited occurrence which illustrates the dubious nature of the protection theory followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1963 known as Gideon v. Wainwright, which affirmed the right of indigent felony defendants to counsel. Those convicted without counsel and sent to prison were ordered released. As a result, the State of Florida released 1,252 indigent felons before their sentences were completed . There was fear that such a mass exodus from prison might result in an increase in crime. However, after 28 months, the Florida Department of Corrections found that the recidivism rate for these ex-prisoners was only 13.6 percent, compared to 25 percent for those released after completing their full sentence s. An American Bar Association committee commenting on the case observed:¶ Baldly stated, . . . if we, today, turned loose all of the inmates of our prisons without regard to the length of their sentences, and with some exceptions , without regard to their previous offenses, we might reduce the recidivism rate over what it would be if we kept each prisoner incarcerated until his sentence expired. [66] ¶ For more than a century, statisticians have demonstrated that regardless of imprisonment, the crime rate remains constant . Removing some few people from society simply means an unapprehended majority continue in criminal activity. If that one to three percent who end up in prison were released, they would not significantly increase the lawbreaking population. Ex-Prisoners are cast out of society---they have significantly less chances of getting a job, getting married, or receive governmental benefits, which results increased rates of recidivism. Becky Pettit and Bruce Western 04, Pettit – Professor of Sociology at University of Washington, Western – Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, 2004, “Mass I Imprisonment a and t the L Life C Course: Race a and C Class I Inequality i in U U.S. I Incarceration”, AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2 2004, VOL. 6 69 (April: 151–169) Edited for gendered language. Imprisonment significantly alters the life course. In most cases, men [and women] entering prison will already be “off-time .” Time in juvenile incarceration and jail and weak connections to work and family divert many prison inmates from the usual path followed by young adults. Spells of imprisonment —thirty to forty months on average— further delay entry into the conventional adult roles of worker, spouse and parent . More commonly military service, not imprisonment, is identified as the key institutional experience that redirects life trajectories (Hogan 1981; Elder 1986; Xie 1992). Elder (1987:543) describes military service as a “legitimate timeout” that offered disadvantaged servicemen in World War Two an escape from family hardship. Similarly, imprisonment can provide a chance to re-evaluate life’s direction (Sampson and Laub 1993, 223; Edin, Nelson, and Paranal 2001). Typically, though, the effects of imprisonment are clearly negative. Ex- prisoners earn lower wages and experience more unemployment than similar men who have not been incarcerated (Western, Kling and Weiman 2001 review the literature). They are also less likely to get married or cohabit with the mothers of their children (Hagan and Dinovitzer 1999; Western and McLanahan 2000 ). By eroding employment and marriage opportunities, incarceration may also provide a pathway back into crime (Sampson and Laub 1993; Warr 1998). The volatility of adolescence may thus last well into midlife among men serving prison time. Finally, imprisonment is an illegitimate timeout that confers an enduring stigma. Employers of low-skill workers are extremely reluctant to hire men [ people ] with criminal records (Holzer 1996; Pager 2003). The stigma of a prison record also creates legal barriers to skilled and licensed occupations , rights to welfare benefits, and voting rights (Office of the Pardon Attorney 1996; Hirsch et al. 2002; Uggen and Manza 2002). In short, going to prison is a turning point in which young crime-involved men [ex-prisoners] acquire a new status involving diminished life chances and an attenuated form of citizenship. The life course significance of imprisonment motivates our analysis of the evolving probability of prison incarceration over the life cycle. Felony Charges Turn

Felony charges are more likely to keep people in the system and increase crime Michelle Alexander 10, associate professor of law at Stanford Law School, civil rights lawyer, advocate and legal scholar, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 2010, p. 89-90 Once convicted of felony drug charges, one’s chances of being released from the system in short order are slim, at best. The elimination of judicial discretion through mandatory sentencing laws has forced judges to impose sentences for drug crimes that are often longer than those violent criminals receive. When judges have discretion, they may consider a defendant’s background and impose a lighter penalty if the defendant’s personal circumstances— extreme poverty or experience of abuse, for example—warrant it. This flexibility—which is important in all criminal cases—is especially important in drug cases, as studies have indicated that many drug defendants are using or selling to support an addiction.75 Referring a defendant to treatment, rather than sending him or her to prison, may well be the most prudent choice—saving government resources and potentially saving the defendant from a lifetime of addiction. Likewise, imposing a short prison sentence (or none at all) may increase the chances that the defendant will experience successful re-entry. A lengthy prison term may increase the odds that reentry will be extremely difficult, leading to relapse, and re- imprisonment. Mandatory drug sentencing laws strip judges of their traditional role of considering all relevant circumstances in an effort to do justice in the individual case. Crime Link Turns Empirics prove---the PIC only increases rates of recidivism--- releasing prisoners early has been found to decrease the reoccurrence of crime. Mark Morris, 76, editor of “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists”, part of the Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976, “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionsists”, http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapter2.shtml

Myth: Prisons protect society from "criminals."¶ Reality: Prisons fail to protect society from "criminals," except for a very small percentage and only temporarily. Prisons "protect" the public only from those few who get caught and convicted, thereby serving the primary function of control over certain segments of society.¶ According to Norman Carlson, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, "The goal of our criminal justice system is to protect law-abiding citizens from crime, particularly crimes of violence, and to make them secure in their lives and property." [59] Despite shifts in "correctional" emphases, restraint or keeping the "criminal" out of circulation continues to be a key purpose of prisons. However, it is questionable how much real protection prisons afford, because only a small percent of all law-breakers end up in prison and most of these few remain in prison for a relatively short period of time.¶ Prisons have pacified the public with the image of "safety," symbolized by walls and cages located in remote areas. But prisons are a massive deception: seeming to "protect," they engender hostility and rage among all who are locked into the system , both prisoner and keeper. Society is victimized by the exploitation of its fear of crime.¶ Indeed, rather than protecting society from the harmful, prisons are in themselves harmful . It is likely that persons who are caged will become locked into a cycle of crime and fear, returning to prison again and again . Prisons are selectively damaging to specific groups in society; namely, Blacks and other minorities. ¶

The prison system fails, they don’t protect society and disproportionately affect a small group of people the poor, the minorities, and the young Mark Morris, 76, editor of “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists”, part of the Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976, “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionsists”, http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapter2.shtml

The failure of prisons to protect is bound up with the reality of who actually gets caugh t. According to the system managers, true protection would require a high degree of effectiveness. [60 ] The system, however, is highly ineffective. Few lawbreakers are apprehended and most studies show that only one to three percent of all reported crime results in imprisonmen t. In one study, out of 100 major crimes (felonies): 50 were reported to the police; suspects were arrested in 12 of the cases; six persons were convicted; one or two went to prison. [61]¶ Those who find themselves entrapped in the criminal (in)justice systems most often are a select group, usually stereotype "criminals "-a threat in some way to those in power: the poor, minorities, the young. Very few of the total lawbreaking population are ever caught, [ 62] and an estimated one-half to three-fourths [63] of all crime is never reported. How can prison-as-protection be anything but an illusion?¶ The objection is often raised: "Better to be protected at least from that small minority of lawbreakers who are convicted." What, then, is the nature of this protection ?¶ Society may have intended prisons to be "protective " mechanisms, but like infected tonsils they have become overloaded carriers of precisely the germs or problems against which they were directed . A removal operation is necessary for the protection and health of the body politic. ¶ —Ron Bell, chaplain at Somerset, New Jersey County Jail,Fortune News, June 1974¶ The prison, the reformatory, and the jail have achieved only a shocking record of failure. There is overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it. Their very nature insures failure.¶ -Corrections, National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, p. 597¶ People who feel reassured by the high walls of the prison, its sentries, control towers and its remoteness from population centers are naive. Most prisoners leave their institutions at some point. In the United States, 95 percent are released after an average imprisonment of 24 to 32 months.... So the protection offered by the prison during the incarceration of the offender is surely a short term insurance policy and a dubious one at that. [64]¶ We can see then, that if prison protects at all, warehousing is only temporary, for most all prisoners are ultimately released back into society , [65] usually within two to three years. Moreover, the deterrent effect of prisons, on individuals and on the larger society, is highly questionable. There is no insurance of further "protection" from criminal activity beyond release.

There are strategies for decarceration and alternative solutions for the decarceration of prisons-prisons aren’t key to preventing crime-only takes 10 years before prisons could be closed Mark Morris, 76, editor of “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists”, part of the Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976, “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionsists”, http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapter5.shtml

A second strategy for decarcerating prisons was enthusiastically cheered at the First National Conference on Alternatives to Incarceration.[2] Ira Lowe, for 25 years a Washington, D. C. trial lawyer and civil libertarian, whose clients have ranged from antiwar activist Tom Hayden to John Ehrlichman of Watergate, briefly outlined a ten- year release time-plan. Basing rapidity of release on potential threat to public safety, he prefaced his remarks by pointing out that " t he judiciary and all of us must accept the fact that there is no such thing as good and bad torture; no such thing as a good prison. We must accept the fact that they must be emptied . Once we set that as a goal we can begin to act."¶ Lowe's plan calls for (1) a moratorium on all prison sentences beginning immediately . (2) Attorneys and judges would propose and structure alternative sanctions. (3) Victimless crimes would carry no more sentences. (4) No prison sentences at all would be allowed until the government proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they have tried alternatives unsuccessfully. (5) Attorneys would be required to present alternatives to the court and (6) all probation reports would recommend alternatives .¶ Lowe further advocated dividing current inmates into four classes with an equal number of task forces of law enforcement officials, aided by citizens, assigned to administer a weeding out process and administration of punishments. Each task force to start at once:¶ (1) The first group-approximately 15 to 20 percent of the prison population- perpetrators of "victimless crimes " such as gambling, prostitution, marijuana use and homosexuality- would be identified and released from prison immediately. Release of this group should take less than a year.¶ (2) The second group-between 45 and 55 percent of the prison population- persons who even prison officials would clearly consider releasable, offenders of nonviolent crimes such as crimes against property without weapons or violence, would be released from prison and allowed to complete their term of sentence by performing a public service to society and, where applicable, specific restitution to their victim(s). This task force could accomplish its purpose within five years.¶ (3) Lowe believes that of the remaining 30 percent, about half are borderline cases and eventually releasable. The third task force, then, would cull out this 15 percent for in-community sanction s, "not taking chances of releasing anyone who is a physical danger." Lowe recommends a seven year weeding out process for this group.¶ (4) The fourth group, the final 15 percent, should be given full medical and psychological study. In the new environment some knowledge may result on how to deal with such persons and hopefully how to prevent others from following their patterns. A ten year transition period for this last group's transfer would be required. And the prisons could be closed.

Prisons don’t cure prisoners- banning indeterminate sentencing is a key step to decarceration and abolition of prisons Mark Morris, 76, editor of “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists”, part of the Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976, “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionsists”, http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapter5.shtml

According to one California ex-prisoners' group, [6] indeterminate sentencing comes under widespread attack because it violates four basic principles of justice :¶ (1) Lack of equity . Men and women do very different amounts of time for commission of the same crime. No psychiatrist, ex-prison guard, or any other human being can say with reasonable accuracy when a person is "rehabilitated."¶ (2 ) Lack of predictability . The uncertainty in a prisoner's mind as to when s/he will be released is a prime source of anxiety, frustration, bitterness and violence in prisons.¶ (3) Length of time served . Under the indeterminate sentence law, terms in California have lengthened. They are now among the longest served anywhere in the world.¶ (4) Procedural due process . When decisions are being made affecting a person's liberty, it is essential that the relevant evidence and arguments be fairly tested for accuracy. Without procedures insuring due process, it is unlikely the truth will be found.¶ Richard McGee, for 23 years director of the California Department of Corrections and one of the strongest advocates of indeterminate sentencing and the medical model, did a complete about face when he finally realized its basic assumptions had been proven false. In an interview with an ex-prisoners' group, he advocated abolishing indeterminate sentences along with parole boards:¶ Those are the most radical things I've said in some time .... I was an early advocate of the indeterminate sentence ... but I have reversed myself completely .... We assumed we knew how to treat criminality but we found out we don't know ... we let people believe that we know when a prisoner should be let go .¶ The mistake made in pushing for indeterminate sentencing is that we used a false analogy , a medical analogy. The assumption was that a prison is like a hospital, where the inmate is cured and released when the doctor s, or the prison officials, say so. But prison officials don't cure prisoners and it is the parole board, not the officials, who decide when a prisoner is released ... the indeterminate sentence has proven out generally, to mean an increased sentence , roughly 24 to 40 months more time, for the prisoners ... with abolition of the indeterminate sentence and of the parole board, we should give it all back to the courts who are equipped by training to deal with it.¶ -The Outlaw, July 1974¶ Voices against indeterminacy¶ Many other prisoner-related groups and organizations advocate abolishing indeterminate sentences and/or the present parole system. Among them:¶ ÒWhatever sanction or short sentence is imposed is to be fixed by law. There is to be no discretion in setting sentences, no indeterminate sentences, and unsupervised street release is to replace parole."¶ -Struggle for Justice, p. 144¶ The Western Association of Prisons in America completed a four-day meeting on September 16 with a call for the elimination of parole and use of the indeterminate sentence. Any release from an institution should be "a complete discharge, rather than a conditional release," stated the association.¶ Claiming the indeterminate sentence has left administrators with too much discretion to authorize an individual's release, the association alleged that it has "encouraged excessive and unequal confinement in the name of treatment ." T o counteract the indeterminate sentence, the organization called for a reduction in the maximum terms associated with some crimes and advised that standards be set and adhered to.¶ -Free World Times, October 1973¶ Indeterminate sentences must be ended. Maintaining incarceration because it is predicted that the prisoner presents some future danger must also come to an end .¶ -Statement of Ex-Prisoners Advisory Group, Toward a New Corrections Policy: Two Declarations of Principles¶ The indeterminate sentence has not had the salutary effects predicted. Instead it has resulted in the exercise of a wide discretion without the guidance of standards and in longer periods of time served in prison .... There should, therefore, be strict limitations on the judicial and quasi-judicial exercise of discretion in the fixing of terms of imprisonment; the definite sentence would automatically eliminate administrative parole board procedures which now consist largely of an untrammeled discretion which reduce prisoners to little more than supplicants. The ultimate goal should be no indeterminacy whatsoever in sentences.¶ -A Program for Prison Reform, p. 12¶ The interim or transitional replacements for the old systems of indeterminate sentences and parole are crucial. Even minor legislative revisions to criminal codes drastically affect the lives of millions of individuals who are caught in the criminal (in)justice systems. Thus, proposed interim penal codes must be carefully scrutinized and approved by those whose lives are directly affected.¶ In 1975 there appeared to be a healthy movement developing toward abolishing indeterminate sentences and parole. Examining some of the issues raised by results in Maine and California helps us to define some of the paradoxes and problems inherent in interim reforms. Prison Spending T/O Prison spending trades off with other crime fighting efforts such as counterterror and the FBI- turns the disad Mike, Adams, 15, Mike Adams writes for stoners and smut enthusiasts in HIGH TIMES, Playboy’s The Smoking Jacket and Hustler Magazine, 7/1/15, “Groundbreaking Legislation Would Abolish Federal Sentences for Drug Crimes”, http://www.hightimes.com/read/groundbreaking-legislation-would-abolish-federal- sentences-drug-crimes

A group of national lawmakers are working to eliminate the use of the federal prison system for minor drug offenders , submitting a proposal earlier this week aimed at designating these facilities for serious offenders only. On Thursday, Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and Bobby Scott of Virginia introduced a bill that some are calling one of the most groundbreaking pieces of sentencing reform to ever be considered in the United States.¶ The bill, which is called the “Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective ( SAFE) Justice Act of 2015 ,” would begin to chip away at the federal prison crisis across the nation—a problem that has manifested over a 500-percent upsurge in incarceration rates over the past few decades. The goal of the latest measure is to do away with federal sentences for minor drug possession by allowing those cases to be dealt with on a state-by-state basi s. It also seeks to put restrictions on mandatory minimums, setting aside these penalties for major drug traffickers , while only applying “life sentences” for the most abominable cases. The bill would also expand on compassionate release programs for low-risk elderly and terminally ill offenders. ¶ The SAFE Act simply begs the reduction of over-federalization and over-criminalization by providing more flexibility between state and federal law when it comes to prosecuting drug-related crim e. The proposal encompasses numerous factors, ranging from the creation of a citizen complaint process to establishing probationary sentences, all in an effort to diminish prison overcrowding and to save citizens billions of dollars.¶ “Taxpayers will pour $6.9 billion into the Bureau of Prisons this year, with substantial increases each year into the foreseeable future unless Congress fixes the system,” former U.S. Representative Newt Gingrich and political activist Pat Nolan wrote in The Washington Times. “ The inspector general of the Department of Justice has said that this level of spending is 'unsustainable.' Federal prisons are squeezing out spending for counterterrorism agencies, victim services, the FBI, and other important crime-fighting initiatives. " ¶ Perhaps most importantly, this bill would ensure that citizens who buy drugs on the black market would no longer be in violation of federal law. Offenders would simply be held accountable under the statutes of their respective state. This combined with the reduction of mandatory minimum sentences, in theory, could be sufficient enough to drastically reduce the number of people stuck in U.S. penitentiaries for drug crimes.¶ “Today, we know what works in the correctional field and what doesn’t, and the debate is no longer about whether we need reform,” Gingrich and Nolan continued. “There is bipartisan consensus that reforms are imperative. Now is the time for conservatives to lead the charge."¶ This legislation has bipartisan backing, as well as the support of all of the usual suspects, including Families Against Mandatory Minimums and the American Civil Liberties Union. AT: Serial Killers The “dangerous few” that society highlights devise only a miniscule portion of those incarcerated. Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf If there are indeed some small subset of people properly denominated the dangerous few, they are only those who are intent on perpetrating acts of vicious harm against others such that they are an imminent threat to all those around them regardless of their circumstances. An abolitionist framework is not necessarily committed to denying the existence of the se dangerous few persons, though the dangerous few are vastly outnumbered by many millions of nondangerous individuals living under criminal supervision and any such dangerousness on the part of those incarcerated currently is exacerbated by features of prison society that a wider embrace of an abolitionist ethic and framework would improve. Because any such dangerous few persons constitute at most only a small minority of the many millions of people under criminal supervision in the United States— the one of every thirty-five American adults under criminal supervision of some form 65— the question of the danger these few may pose can be deferred for some time as decarceration could by political necessity only proceed gradually . And so the question of the dangerous few ought not to eclipse or overwhelm the urgency of a thorough consideration of abolitionist analyses and reformist project s of displacement of criminal regulation by other regulatory approaches. In any event, an abolitionist ethic recognizes that even if a person is so awful in her violence that the threat she poses must be forcibly contained , this course of action ought to be undertaken with moral conflict, circumspection, and even shame, as a choice of the lesser of two evils, rather than as an achievement of justice. To respond to victims of violence justly would be to make them whole and to address forms of collective vulnerability so those and other persons are less likely to be harmed again. Even when confronting the dangerous few, on an abolitionist account, justice is not meaningfully achieved by caging, degrading, or even more humanely confining, the person who assaulted the vulnerable among us. Prisons are used to perpetuate the idea of “dangerous people” instead of looking into the problems of people-this leads to the destruction of THOUSANDS of lives Mark Morris, 76, editor of “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists”, part of the Prison Research Education Action Project, 1976, “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionsists”, http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapter7.shtml

The selective and arbitrary process of labeling dangerousness is inherently political. Such labels are the basis of "preventative detention" and other forms of "treatment" which result in the violent (non)solution of caging. It is crucial that abolitionists examine the political implications and reliability of "dangerous" labels and predictions:¶ We might expect the origins of the word "danger " to be related to... its current use in denoting physical objects and events that might damage property or injure people. Surprisingly ... the term seems to have shaped out of linguistic roots that signified relative position in a social structure , a relationship between roles on a power dimension. The root is found in Latin in a derivative of dominium, meaning lordship or sovereignty .... The implication ... leads us ... into the conception of danger as a symbol denoting relative power in social organization .... Those persons or groups that threaten the existing power structure are dangerous. In any historical period, to identify an individual whose status is that of member of the "dangerous classes," (i.e., the classes that threaten the dominium or power structure) the label "criminal "has been handy.¶ -Theodore R. Sarbin, The Myth of the Criminal Type, pp. 16-17 ¶ People do not come into the world labeled "chattel " and "not chattel," "schizophrenic" and "not schizophrenic," " dangerous" and "not dangerous ." We -slave traders and plantation owners, psychiatrists and judges- so label them.¶ -Thomas Szasz, "On Involuntary Psychiatry," New York Times, August 4, 1975¶ Prisons have been used to limit the movement of persons labeled as "dangerous," "psychotic" or "disturbed," a labeling process which began in the community, in the bad schools and continued thru each stage of the criminal justice system. The result has been the destruction of thousands of lives. We have been so concerned with containment, with limiting movement, that we haven't looked for the real troubles in people, in communities, in our social and economic system.¶ -John Boone, Former Director of Corrections, State of Massachusetts, Fortune News, May 1975¶ It is no wonder that today preventive detention proposals are so intensely opposed by Black organizations. They recognize correctly that their movement for freedom and self-determination is seen as "dangerous" by established white America. We approach the concept of "dangerousness" with considerable skepticism, for it has little meaning apart from its social and political concept.¶ -Struggle for Justice, p. 78¶ Men in prison are dangerous because they are threatened with sophisticated forms of extinction in the hands of simple minded wage earners who claim they are "only doing their duty" or "just following orders" as five or six of them are wrestling you to the floor to stick a needle in your arm or ass.¶ -Howard A. Lund, prisoner, NEPA News, March 1974¶ The defenders of these treatment models refuse to acknowledge that society, thru its injustices which are magnified inside prison walls, remains the principle impetus to violent behavior. Almost inevitably, those prisoners who refuse to accept the authoritarian, dehumanizing conditions of prison and who organize disruptive political behavior, exhibit repeated, angry "acting out" behavior, and flood the courts with litigation are the prisoners deemed candidates for DSU (Departmental Segregation Unit) or other "special offender" programs.¶ -Donna Parker, NEPA News, June 1974 Terrorism DA AT: Terrorism DA

The discourse of terrorism is inexorably linked with our critique of the racist construct of the criminal- the DA links to our critique. Angela Davis 11, professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture (Open Media Series), ebook no pages In your essay “Race and Criminalization” you write: “The figure of the criminal—the racialized figure of the criminal—has come to represent the most menacing enemy of ‘American Society.’ Virtually anything is acceptable—torture, brutality, vast expenditures of public funds—as long as it is done in the name of public safety.” Do you think the “terrorist” is our new racialized criminal?¶ I remember that when I wrote that essay I was thinking about the “criminal” as surrogate for “communist” in the era of “law and order.” I thought about this new discursive figure of the criminal, which absorbed much of the discourse of the communist enemy. In the aftermath of 9/11, the figure of the “terrorist” mobilizes collective fear in ways that recapitulate and consolidate previous ideologies of the national enemy. Yes, the terrorist is the contemporary enemy. The rhetoric, the attendant anxieties, and the diversionary strategies produced by the deployment of the figure of the terrorist are very similar to, and rely in very concrete ways on, the production of the criminal as pervasive threat.

Reform CP - AFF Perm Do Both The idea of abolition does not exclude reform but instead views it as a stepping stone to complete abolition. Angela Y. Davis 05, Professor in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, 2005, “The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A Conversation”, http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davisinterview.html The seemingly unbreakable link between prison reform and prison development -- referred to by Foucault in his analysis of prison history -- has created a situation in which progress in prison reform has tended to render the prison more impermeable to change and has resulted in bigger, and what are considered "better," prisons. The most difficult question for advocates of prison abolition is how to establish a balance between reforms that are clearly necessary to safeguard the lives of prisoners and those strategies designed to promote the eventual abolition of prisons as the dominant mode of punishment. In other words , I do not think that there is a strict dividing line between reform and abolition. For example, it would be utterly absurd for a radical prison activist to refuse to support the demand for better health care inside Valley State, California's largest women's prison, under the pretext that such reforms would make the prison a more viable institution. Demands for improved health care , including protection from sexual abuse and challenges to the myriad ways in which prisons violate prisoners' human rights, can be integrated into an abolitionist context that elaborates specific decarceration strategies and helps to develop a popular discourse on the need to shift resources from punishment to education, housing, health care, and other public resources and services. Reform Fails

Only complete abolition of federal prisons solves--- imprisonment is inextricably linked to violence and depersonalization. Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf It is insufficient to simply seek to reform the most egregious instances of violence and abuse that occur in prison while retaining a commitment to prison backed criminal law enforcement as a primary social regulatory framework. Of course, less violence in these places would undoubtedly render prisons more habitable, but the degradation associated with incarceration in the United States is at the heart of the structure of imprisonment elucidated decades ago by Sykes: Imprisonment in its basic structure entails caging or imposed physical constriction, minute control of prisoners’ bodies and most intimate experiences , profound depersonalization, and institutional dynamics that tend strongly toward violence . These dehumanizing aspects of incarceration are unlikely to be meaningfully eliminated in the U.S., following decades of failed efforts to that end, while retaining a commitment to the practice of imprisonment . This is especially so in the United States for reasons related to the specific historical and racially subordinating legacies of American incarceration and punitive policing. Two hundred and forty years of slavery and ninety years of legalized segregation, enforced in large measure through criminal law administration, render U.S. carceral and punitive policing practices less amenable to the reforms undertaken, for example, in Scandinavian countries, which have more substantially humanized their prisons.127

Reformism doesn’t fix a flawed system because the prison system can’t be fixed-abolition is key Lex Horan, 10, skilled in facilitating conversations and trainings around numerous topics, including the prison system, LGBT issues (particularly trans politics), class privilege, and organizational development/strategic planning, April 2010, “Against a Better Prison: Gender Responsiveness and the Changing Terrain of Abolition”, http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1415&context=etd_hon_theses

Reformist activism builds on a few basic premises that determine the types of changes that are included on reformist agendas. Of course, there is no single reformist perspective on the prison system that can be assessed as a coherent whole: reformist organizations and campaigns vary widely in the extent of their critiques of the prison system and in the changes they call for. However, for the sake of this project, I am defining “reformist” work according to the interpretations of the prison system that inform it. There are a few key premises that I will focus on in my discussion of gender responsiveness, and which I propose are inherent in all reformist perspectives: namely, that the harms of imprisonment are indicators of flaws (or brokenness) in the prison system , and that prisons can be “improved” in order to function more effectively or more justly. 83 ¶ A reformist perspective conceptualizes prisons as perfectible and often pursues changes that aim to make prisons “better.” This language is ubiquitous in theories of gender responsiveness. In the preface to the report Gender-Responsive Strategies, authors Bloom, Owen, and Covington summarize their findings:¶ “Policies, programs, and procedures that reflect these empirical, genderbased differences can accomplish the following: • Make the management of women offenders more effective . • Enable correctional facilities to be more suitably staffed and funded. • Decrease staff turnover and sexual misconduct. • Improve program and service delivery. • Decrease the likelihood of litigation against the criminal justice system. • Increase the gender- appropriateness of services and programs.” (Bloom, Owen, and Covington 2003, vi, emphasis added)¶ The preface concludes, “Managing women offenders more effectively in correctional settings and providing more effective programs and services will benefit the women, increase community safety, and help build a more effective criminal justice system” (viii, emphasis added). This is quintessential reformist language. It s repeated deployment of words like “effective,” “improve,” and “manage” speaks to its underlying conception of the prison system as an imperfect but redeemable set of institutions. Moreover, there is a clear investment in maintaining the institutional stability of both individual prisons and the prison system more broadly. While the report gestures briefly to the reality of sexual abuse (“misconduct”), it seems that the authors are more concerned with minimizing staff turnover, securing “suitable” funding for prisons, and decreasing litigation than they are with addressing deplorable conditions facing prisoners. This position belies the investment that gender responsiveness, and many other reformist programs, has in bolstering the prison system against external threats. ¶ The effort to “improve” prisons stems from a slippage where by the harms associated with imprisonment are attributed to the “failures” or ineffectiveness of the 84 prison system . Staff abuse, insufficient health care, corruption, lack of oversight, and high recidivism rates are all understood to be symptoms of a system that is working incorrectly . Gender responsiveness theories are situated firmly within these assumptions, asserting that the criminal legal system is failing women. Gender- Responsive Strategies is filled with such examples. Because most prison classification schemas and “risk assessments” were originally designed for men, women are often “overclassified”—that is, placed in higher security facilities than “their actual level of violence or escape potential” should call for (Bloom, Owen, and Covington 2003, 19). Prison staff are inadequately trained to address “female offender issues” (16). Women’s prisons have fewer programming opportunities than men’s prisons. “Staff sexual misconduct” is a serious issue in women’s prisons (25). Since most women in prison are mothers, imprisonment poses a strain on family relationships and increases the pressure during reentry when women are released from prison.

California proves that while prisons fail the prison-industrial complex does what it is designed to do, reforms only worsen the problem-the system MUST be eliminated Lex Horan, 10, skilled in facilitating conversations and trainings around numerous topics, including the prison system, LGBT issues (particularly trans politics), class privilege, and organizational development/strategic planning, April 2010, “Against a Better Prison: Gender Responsiveness and the Changing Terrain of Abolition”, http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1415&context=etd_hon_theses The discourse of a “failing” prison system is nowhere more present than in California in the midst of its “prison crisis.” Progressives and prison reformers 85 consistently use the state’s 70% recidivism rate and thirty-three prisons filled to bursting to argue that California prisons must be doing something wrong. However, to describe the prison system as “failing ” (or to articulate a parallel call for more “effective” or “evidence-based” prison policy) is to assume a set of foundational intentions of the prison system that are far from given. For recidivism and skyrocketing rates of imprisonment to be read as indicators of failure , one must assume that the primary goal of the prison system is to diminish and prevent future imprisonment (and perhaps even by extension to eliminate itself altogether). Critiques of the notion of the “failing” prison system have been articulated by many different actors. Critical Resistance argues that “The PIC [prison industrial complex] … isn’t a broken system. It works extremely well to do what is designed to do (kill and disappear those people who pose the biggest challenges to those with the most power: poor people, people of color, queer and gender queer people, young people, etc.). This system doesn’t need fixing. It needs to be eliminated ” (Critical Resistance, “PIC Talking Points”). While nearly all reformist examinations of the prison system point to the disproportionate incarceration of Black people, other people of color, and poor people, this phenomenon is often framed as an unintended consequence of the U.S.’s massive war on drugs, or at best as an inevitable outcome of a racialized distribution of poverty. However, in “The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A Conversation,” Angela Davis and Dylan Rodríguez situate the prison industrial complex’s targeting of poor Black people at the very center of that system’s working, not as an aberration or an unfortunate demographic error but as integral to the U.S. social and racial order . Davis takes her own experiences as a political prisoner as a point of departure: “If prison was the state- 86 sanctioned destination for activists such as myself, it was also used as a surrogate solution to social problems associated with poverty and racism” (Davis and Rodríguez 200, 212). Rodríguez, speaking to Davis, goes even further, asserting that“[t]he logic of the prison-industrial complex is closer to what you, George Jackson, and others were forecasting back then as mass containment, the effective elimination of large numbers of (poor, black) people from the realm of civil society” (213). This vantage point, produced by radical thinkers situated in the U.S. state constituted by the post-1970 prison boom, makes a clear argument about the foundations of the U.S. prison industrial complex.

Reforms only fuel the prison system and perpetuates discrimination against POC and women, abolition is key Nathan Goodman, 14, the Lysander Spooner Research Scholar in Abolitionist Studies at the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS). In addition to writing at C4SS, he blogs at Dissenting Leftist, 11/29/14, “Prisons: The Case for Abolition”, http://s4ss.org/from-nl-1-3-prisons-the-case-for-abolition-nathan-goodman/ Attempts to reform the prison system are likely to fuel the prison system because of the perverse incentives that structure our political system. Prison guards, private prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America, contractors that provide services in prisons, and firms that profit off prison labor are all concentrated interest groups that benefit from incarceration . Meanwhile, the costs of operating prisons are widely dispersed across a population that has little incentive to research prisons and largely thinks prisons are necessary for their protection. Those most substantially harmed by the prison system are prisoners , who are not able to vote or go lobby their representatives. Felon disenfranchisement limits their political power even after they are released from prison. Their family members and neighbors have their political power limited, because prisoners are often counted on the census for the area they are incarcerated , not the area they were forcibly taken from. This means that regions that profit from prisons have increased political representation, while regions that are scarred by mass incarceration are disenfranchised. This phenomenon is called “prison based gerrymandering.”¶ Political incentives have given us a prison system that may be immune to humane reform. G iven the violence and harm caused by the prison system, the goal should be something more radical: prison abolition. We should use every tool at our disposal to help keep people out of the state’s brutal prison system . This can mean filming cops, helping people encrypt possibly incriminating communications and transactions, or urging juries to nullify unjust laws. We should support those caged by this system. This can mean writing them letters or donating to their legal defense fund or commissary.¶ But perhaps most importantly, we should acut to end the state’s monopoly on law, security, and justice. As Bruce Benson documents in The Enterprise of Law, prisons and criminal law displaced a system of customary tort law. A customary legal system based on restitution for victims was replaced by an authoritarian system that diverted resources towards the state’s rulers and their cronies. That authoritarian plunder is precisely how our current justice system operates, and it has disastrous consequences. Police have incentives to focus on victimless “crimes ” like drug dealing and sex work, because investigating such crimes allows them to profit from civil asset forfeiture in a way they cannot in rape or murder cases. This emphasis on vice crimes leads to discriminatory enforcement and the criminalization of entrepreneurship that is essential for some people’s survival, particularly those who are excluded from the formal economy. Moreover , criminal law is not based on demonstrating harm, but on state edic t. Therefore, a litany of crimes can be created on the whims of rent seeking special interest groups and moralist busybodies alike. So we see a long parade of bootleggers and Baptists producing authoritarian law after authoritarian law, filling the state’s cages.¶ Ultimately, this leaves many people unable to rely on the state’s system of law enforcement. Communities of color see police as an occupying army rather than their protectors . Drug dealers and sex workers are surely unable to trust police , as their professions are treated as crimes. Immigrants fear that contact with police means they will be swept up by the federal government’s Secure Communities program and deported . Surveys show that a majority of transgender individuals are uncomfortable seeking police assistance. Sexual assault survivors correctly fear that police will dismiss them and victim blame them . If a rape kit is taken, it will likely join a massive backlog of untested rape kits while police resource are funneled towards militarization and vice enforcement’s lucrative legal plunder.¶ Prison abolitionists should create entrepreneurial alternatives to the state’s monopoly on law, security, and justice. The Audre Lorde Project in New York City runs the Safe OUTside the System Collective[5] to help combat hate violence without calling the police. Such community projects are one way to fill the void. Private security firms are another. Cryptography and other innovations have potential to help us build the new law in the shell of the old faster than we ever could before.¶ The state’s legal system is a predatory system. It is a system of plunder and violence that exacerbates inequality, ruins lives, and enables the very crimes it claims to punish. It’s time to abolish prisons. And to abolish prisons, we must abolish the state. AT: PICs Must Oppose All Forms- Cant Tinker

Abolition cannot include replacing prison with other alternatives Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf In contrast to leading scholarly and policy efforts to reform criminal law,¶ abolition decidedly does not seek merely to replace incarceration with alternatives¶ that are closely related to imprisonment, such as punitive policing, noncustodial¶ criminal supervision, probation, civil institutionalization, and parole. 25 Abolition¶ instead entails a rejection of the

Abolition must be total- cant carve out exceptions for certain offenders Allegra M. McLeod 15, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 2015, “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice”, UCLA Law Review, 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156 (2015), http://www.uclalawreview.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/McLeod_6.2015.pdf In short, there are many who have committed acts of violence but who, under circumstances of social coexistence enabled by positive abolition, would pose no threat of harm to themselves or others. A commitment to any significant decarceration, let alone abolition, entails more than simply eliminating incarceration for nonviolent, nonserious, nonfelony convictions ,63 or less serious felony convictions classified as violent.64 Even people convicted of serious, violent felonies are not properly understood as the dangerous few and should be able to live their lives outside of cages. A commitment to any significant degree of decarceration requires a willingness to abandon managing perceived risks of violence by banishing and relegating to civil death any person convicted of serious crime. Reducing social risk by physically isolating and caging entire populations is not morally defensible , even if abandoning such practices may increase some forms ofsocial disorder. If there are indeed some small subset of people properly denominated the dangerous few, they are only those who are intent on perpetrating acts of vicious harm against others such that they are an imminent threat to all those around them regardless of their circumstances. An abolitionist framework is not necessarily committed to denying the existence of these dangerousfew persons, though the dangerous few are vastly outnumbered by many millions of nondangerous individuals living under criminal supervision and any such dangerousness on the part of those incarcerated currently is exacerbated by features of prison society that a wider embrace of an abolitionist ethic and framework would improve. Because any such dangerous few persons constitute at most only a small minority of the many millions of people under criminal supervision in the United States — the one of every thirty-five American adults under criminal supervision of some form65—the question of the danger these few may pose can be deferred for some time as decarceration could by political necessity only proceed gradually. And so the question of the dangerous few ought not to eclipse or overwhelm the urgency of a thorough consideration of abolitionist analyses and reformist projects of displacement of criminal regulation by other regulatory approaches. AT: Kritiks AT: Neoliberalism

Prisons have evolved alongside neoliberalism-the plan strikes against the critical neoliberal tenant of “personal responsibility” Lex Horan, 10, skilled in facilitating conversations and trainings around numerous topics, including the prison system, LGBT issues (particularly trans politics), class privilege, and organizational development/strategic planning, April 2010, “Against a Better Prison: Gender Responsiveness and the Changing Terrain of Abolition”, http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1415&context=etd_hon_theses

Many thinkers have pointed to a complex intersection of factors that gave rise to the prison boom of the 1980s and 1990s. Their analyses call attention to state and market restructuring in the face of political and economic crisis and imprisonment as a state response to threats raised by social movements of the 1960s. The prison system as we know it today has been created alongside (and many would argue, as a part of) U .S. economic and political shifts towards neoliberalism that began in the early 1970s. ¶ The “neoliberal turn” can be traced to political and economic crises of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Christian Parenti argues that the expansion of police forces and prisons must also be situated as a response to the domestic economic and social crises 60 that faced the United States beginning in the late 1960s. Parenti’s sketch of the United States in the early 1970s emphasizes that labor had made unprecedented gains in bargaining power that threatened the owning class, and the revolutionary upheavals of the 1960s were significant cause for alarm for the political establishment (Parenti 1999). To manage the dual threats of the economic crisis of “stagflation” and the menace of political power of labor and Black liberation struggles, Nixon began to slowly turn the country on a trajectory that Ronald Regan would pick up in the 1980s. Locked together at the core of this shift were enormous cuts to social spending and unprecedented new investments in police and prisons. Neoliberalism was the political-economic order inaugurated through these changing state and private priorities. ¶ In A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey defines neoliberal ideology as the belief that “human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (Harvey 2005, 2). Although neoliberal r