Abolition

The term abolition emerged during the 1830s to define a means of ending slavery. According to abolitionists slavery could be wiped out only by abandoning it and all the structures dependent on it altogether. In contrast, other antislavery activists at the time known as gradualists sought to end slavery by buying slaves and setting them free. Gradualism did little to reduce or eliminate the slave system since it did not target the root of the practice. Similar divisions exist within the field of criminal justice. Unlike other reformers who want to change, improve, or better the existing justice system, abolitionists wish to do away with it altogether. Reformers who are not abolitionists usually lobby for more humanitarian treatment of offenders, while seeking to reduce prison terms, or alter criminal law in some manner. Such a course calls for modifications—often substantial—without challenging the institutional or philosophical base on which the system is constructed. In contrast, abolitionists want to either eradicate whole elements of the current punishment system or bring an end to it entirely. They also advocate for a variety of alternatives.

Contemporary abolitionism dates from the countercultural political movements of the 1960s and 1970s. As a relatively new force on the penal landscape it is still evolving. Initially defined by its opposition to incarceration as a means of punishment and thus identified as prison abolition, in the mid-1980s the abolitionist position became one of [Page 3]penal abolitionism. Penal abolitionists—activists, ex-prisoners, academics, religious actors, politicians, inmates and their families, laborers, students—are opposed to an adversarial criminal justice system that promotes and supports revenge, punitive imprisonment, retribution, and coercion. They are also equally concerned with victims and offenders since they believe that the current systems fail both parties as well as the community.