Angela Davis, Mumia Abu Jamal, & Alternatives to Prison
Continuing, the authors suggest that a socialist alternative could challenge the prison-industrial society, and the many other problems that create it and emanate from it. For their next system model, the authors write:
"The indigenous peoples of this continent, according to some historians, gave far better evidence of democracy, gender equality, and racism-free life and governance than its European invaders did. We might also discover important insights about justice by looking at histories of indigenous people. Among the Native Americans of the Northeast, criminal justice was a communal concern...Establishing community courts (especially, ones composed of non-lawyers) would utilize these insights from traditional societies, and thus mitigate the destructiveness inherent in the present corporate-type, assembly-line system that is breaking state budgets and individuals’ bodies and spirits on the anvil of so-called “criminal justice.” Nor is this idea unthinkable within the current U.S. legal system. In Pennsylvania, both the state constitution and state law provide for the establishment of “community courts,” as a section of what’s termed the minor judiciary. One was opened in Philadelphia in 2002, becoming one of approximately 30 community courts in U.S. cities (and 50 outside the U.S.) Like its counterparts, the Philadelphia Community Court was empowered to use community service and other restorative sanctions to address “quality of life” offenses such as prostitution, drug possession, and theft. When the court closed down in September 2011 due to funding cuts, it had enabled more than 500,000 hours of community service. It also provided offenders with social services such as medical care and drug counseling.
What, systematically, must be changed? If we see the present structure as problematic, then we must consider how to destroy, reconstruct, or ameliorate it. And if history is our guide, we must be vigorous, for else we will see old forms reassert themselves with new masks, protecting the same (or worse) inequalities.
What we decide to do will be open to the decisions of popular, democratic groupings in the future, as they seek greater humanistic and socialistic expressions, but a basic preliminary list would include:
- End Mass Incarceration by Prison Abolition
- Abolish the Death Penalty
- Establish Communal Courts
- Make Education a Constitutional and Human Right
- Make Human Needs More Primary Than Property Rights