Abolitionist Principles

Valuing Human Dignity

Abolitionists value human dignity. We recognize that every human being has an inherent worth regardless of their background, decisions they have made, and circumstances they may have been forced into. The principle of valuing human dignity is possibly the most important for abolitionists, especially as we wrestle with the question of violence. What do we do when someone has caused harm and violence to us or someone we love? The current reaction of the criminal legal system is to respond to interpersonal violence with state violence–policing and incarceration. But countless other options understand that violence must be addressed while simultaneously recognizing the humanity of the person who has been violent or caused harm.

Holding a person’s humanity in times of conflict is a test of this principle as well. Our vengeance-ridden society has taught us that when someone has done wrong to us that we must get back at them. This is rooted in a carceral mindset – the criminal legal system heavily influences how all actors in our society think about addressing harm or conflict. As abolitionists, we understand that the horror that is confinement in a concrete cage is inherently dehumanizing. We understand that no human being deserves to be incarcerated in a trauma box. Further, as abolitionists, we accept that one’s worth is not tied to their production or their moral standards but is a birthright.

We are all worthy of love, care, and healing.

This principle is most tested when faced with stories of people who have inflicted serious violence upon vulnerable people in our communities. This includes people who have perpetrated gendered and/or sexual violence and those who have killed another. When the tension of holding abolitionist principles and engaging in abolitionist actions comes to face deeply troubling stories, it can be difficult to hold on to conflicting forms of response. We can at once be deeply angered and saddened by the terrible acts a person has done to another person and hold on to the fact that that person is a human, still deserving of life. We can at once be frightened by acts of sexual violence that are committed on distinct lines of power and understand that belittling that person to the worst thing they have ever done, rendering them to the daily violence of incarceration, the violence of the state, is wrong. 

In the end, abolitionists are deeply concerned with understanding the root causes of violence and harm, and working to intervene on those, rather than simply responding when violence has occurred. As abolitionists, we are tasked with the deeply complex yet simple work of respecting humanity, understanding that most people’s first experience with violence comes not as the perpetrator, but as the victim. 

So much of this work is about doing away with stark dichotomies that paint the world in black and white; instead, we can work toward understanding that most issues revolving around humans and our relationships with one another are much more gray. Perpetrators have likely also been victims at some point in their lives. This point is not to excuse the actions of someone who has done harm, but rather to tap into their humanity at the moment that we are faced with the violence they have caused to another. 

We can also begin to grapple with the fact that as humans we mess up, we cause harm, and many of us have been violent in one way or another. None of us are perfect and yet each of us is deserving of care. Resonating with these truths allows us to work against the confinement of people who have committed acts of sexual violence, like those in civil commitment have. And to work towards their freedom and healing and accountability for the harm they have caused.

Safety

Safety looks differently for each of us. What we know is that we have poured billions of dollars into the carceral state and we are no more safe for it. Policing, surveillance, and confinement do not produce safety; they only produce vulnerability to premature death. 

Safety comes when community members are able to live happy and healthy lives, where the necessities of housing, food, education, healthcare, transportation, and a living wage are guaranteed rather than scarce commodities. Imagine a world where every human being can live life in abundance rather than scarcity. So much wrongdoing, harm, and violence happen because our communities have been forced into horrific living conditions, scraping to get by, forced to do things we don’t want to to make ends meet, to get food on the table. These conditions are manufactured by racial capitalism. 

Community safety – as juxtaposed with the “public safety” centered around carcerality – is true safety as described by individual community members. Community safety comes about through building strong relationships with our neighbors. Community safety is freedom from state and interpersonal violence. These communities are not utopias where harm no longer occurs, but where community care works to adequately address violence without more violence.

An example of this care is community accountability, defined as “preventing, intervening in, responding to, and healing from violence through strengthening relationships and communities, emphasizing mutual responsibility for addressing the conditions that allow violence to take place, and holding people accountable for violence and harm.” Community safety comes about through community-based responses to violence and harm including transformative justice, an accountability process that works to transform harm and violence while centering the needs that will make the victim and community whole.