Market development, state formation, and the historical abolition of the debtors’ prison

In the late 18th century, lenders’ right to imprison borrowers for defaulting on debts was taken for granted. By the mid-19th century, this power was widely and permanently revoked. Using a variety of archival evidence, this study explains the historical demise of the debtors’ prison in New York State, the first Western jurisdiction to permanently abolish imprisonment for debt. Tracing seven decades of contestation over moral aspects of credit exchange and incarceration, it shows that the development of capitalist markets, including their cultural and technological consequences, was necessary but not sufficient to render the debtor's prison obsolete. Rather, the development of a liberal polity and a penal state institutionalized new moral views about the use of force in economic exchange, consolidating the legitimacy of bodily detention around the punishment of crimes rather than the coercion of private agreements. The analysis has implications for theories of states, markets, and violence, as well as for recent trends in penal debt, debt resistance, and prison abolition.

Supporting Joint Effort

In 2018, several members of Joint Effort, a solidarity group rooted in principles of prison abolition and anti-carceral feminism, gathered to share their work. Current restrictive policies being imposed by the Correctional Service of Canada have meant that Joint Effort’s valuable inreach services at the Fraser Valley Institution for Women are being eradicated through bureaucratic requirements. The current clearance system requires that members of Joint Effort submit to an invasive screening process, in order to obtain permission to enter the correctional site. This article explores the roots of abolitionist organizing in Canada, the importance of prison inreach, and the ways that correctional bodies stymie prisoner support and solidarity movements. Several suggestions for community-based responses are described, as the clearance issue impacts any allies who support people held in detention facilities across Canada.

Prison Abolition

Prison abolition as an American movement, strategy, and theory has existed since the establishment of prison as the primary mode of punishment. In many of its forms, it is an extension of abolition movements dating back to the inception of slavery. The long-term goal of prison abolition is for all people to live in a safe, liberated, and free world. In practice, prison abolition values healing and accountability, suggesting an entirely different way of living and maintaining relationships outside of oppressive regimes, including that of the prison. Prison abolition is concerned with the dismantling of the prison–industrial complex and other oppressive institutions and structures, which restrict true liberation of people who have been marginalized by those in power. These structures include white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and ablest and heteronormative ideologies. The origins of the prison regime are both global and rooted in history with two fundamental strategies of dominance, the captivity of African-descended peoples, and the conquest of Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples, land and resource. Similarly, the origins of prison abolition begin with the resistance of these systems of dominance. The contemporary prison abolition movement, today, is traced to the Attica Prison Uprising in 1971 when incarcerated people in the New York prison rebelled and demanded change in the living conditions inside prison. The nature of the uprising was different from prior efforts, insofar as the organizers’ demands were about fundamental rights, not merely reforms. Throughout the history of abolition work, there is continuous division between reform and abolition organizers. When the lives, voices, and leadership of the people most impacted by the violence of these oppressive regimes is centered, there is minimal space for discussion of reform. Throughout the abolition movement in America, and other western cultures, the leadership of Black, Indigenous, women, and gender-nonconforming people of color play a pivotal role. By centering the experiences of those most vulnerable, abolitionists understand prison does not need to be reformed and is critical of fashionable reforms and alternatives to prisons which are still rooted in carceral logic.

Foucault, prison, and human rights: A dialectic of theory and criminal justice reform

Michel Foucault’s advocacy toward penal reform in France differed from his theories. Although Foucault is associated with the prison abolition movement, he also proposed more humane prisons. The article reframes Foucauldian theory through a dialectic with the theories of Marc Ancel, a prominent figure in the emergence of liberal sentencing norms in France. Ancel and Foucault were contemporaries whose legacies are intertwined. Ancel defended more benevolent prisons where experts would rehabilitate offenders. This evokes exactly what Discipline and Punish cast as an insidious strategy of social control. In reality, Foucault and Ancel converged in intriguing ways. The dialectic offers another perspective on Foucault, whose theories have fostered skepticism about the possibility of progress. While mass incarceration’s rise in the United States may evoke a Foucauldian dystopia, the relative development of human rights and dignity in European punishment reflects aspirations that Foucault embraced as an activist concerned about fatalistic interpretations of his theories.

Review of Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition by L. Ben-Moshe

No abstract available.

Order, Reform, and Abolition: Changes in Catholic Theological Imagination on Prisons and Punishment

Catholic thinking on prisons and punishment is in a state of flux. For most of its history, the church promoted a theology of order and obedience. Yet, a humanitarian revolution appears underway as the church now opposes punishments it once prescribed, namely torture, slavery, and the death penalty. Crafted largely in response to the prison system in the United States, recent alternatives to the moral-order approach appeal to human dignity, restorative justice, conversion, and social justice. Even so, the trajectory of Catholic moral imagination on punishment bears a particular compatibility with prison abolition.