You’re a prison abolitionist. You’re in a high stakes discussion where you have to answer seriously and be convincing.
Someone asks you : “yeah, but what are we to do with people breaking the law, then? What will you replace prisons with ?”
What will you answer?
The name is important because of the parallels between slavery and modern day prisons.
At minimum, the movement is about completely rethinking our approach to dealing with crime. If we “only” reduce the prison population to 5% or 1% of its current count in the process, we won’t have abolished all prisons, but we will have succeeded in abolishing many parts of the current criminal justice system.
Yeah. I gather you’re from the US.
I’m not telling you what to do.
Then why call it abolish prisons?
I see now that you’re trying trying to trigger an additional emotional response. Working on association, rather than logic. Such manipulation, especially, is something I would not want to be a part of. It’s vile.
You do you. I’ll just repeat my original statement: it also drives away people, who would otherwise agree.