Penal Abolitionist Movement

There have been abolitionist movements against slavery, torture, prostitution, capital punishment, and prison. This entry focuses on the latter alone. When the term “abolitionism” is used in relation to criminological issues, it generally dismisses penal definitions and punitive responses to criminalized problems, and proposes their replacement by dispute settlement, redress, and social justice. More generally, it refers to the abolition of state (supported) institutions that are no longer felt to be legitimate. The word “abolitionism” as currently understood in criminology is adopted from the North American anti-prison movement of the early 1970s. Here Quakers, most notably, take up their historical mission from the anti-slavery movement. They see prison as an institution that today fulfills the same social functions as slavery did until the late nineteenth century: disciplining the (mostly black) underclass. This American penal abolitionism is mainly grounded in religious inspiration, and less in considerations of the countereffectiveness of criminal justice, as is the case in Europe. The European abolitionist social movements of that era were prisoners' unions and more intellectual radical penal reform movements. This more academic abolitionism has its roots in symbolic interactionism and social constructionism, with a strongly Foucauldian focus on discipline in a carceral society.