REVISITED: Abolishing Prisons with Mariame Kaba

If you want to understand the conversation around abolishing the police, you should start here. We can’t think of a better time for an encore presentation of this 2019 episode with Mariame Kaba on how to radically rethink our approach to public safety and what it would look like if we got rid of the criminal justice system as we know it.

What if we just got rid of prisons? The United States is the epicenter of mass incarceration – but exactly what is it we hope to get out of putting people in prisons? And whatever your answer is to that – is it working? It’s worthwhile to stop and interrogate our intentions about incarceration and whether it enacts justice or instead satisfies some urge to punish. Prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba wants us to explore some truly radical notions that force us to inspect those instincts towards punishment. Hear her dismantle what she calls the current "criminal punishment system" and instead employ the ideology of restorative justice.

RELATED LINKS

The Color Complex by Kathy Russel, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall

Locking Up Our Own by James Forman Jr

Circles and Ciphers

Project NIA

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