Advocates For Prison Abolition
Historically, Quakers were among the first advocates for alternatives to prison.
Anarchist groups such as Anarchist Black Cross have played a significant part in the prison abolition movement and this trend continues today. Anarchists wish to eliminate all forms of state control, of which imprisonment is seen as one of the more obvious examples. Anarchists also oppose prisons because they house non-violent offenders (e.g., thieves and swindlers instead of just murderers and rapists), incarcerate mainly poor people and ethnic minorities, and do not generally rehabilitate criminals, in many cases making them worse. As a result, the prison abolition movement often is associated with humanistic socialism, anarchism and anti-authoritarianism.
Read more about this topic: Prison Abolition Movement
Famous quotes containing the words advocates, prison and/or abolition:
“Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don’t know where to go.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“It was a marvel, an enigma in abolition latitudes, that the slaves did not rise en-masse, at the beginning of hostilities.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)