Angela Davis - Are Prisons Obsolete?

- Español

Many people have already reached the conclusion that the death penalty is an outmoded
form of punishment that violates basic principles of human rights. It is time, I believe, to
encourage similar conversations about the prison.
Two million people (out of a world total of nine million!) now inhabit U.S. prisons, jails, youth
facilities, and immigrant detention centers.
Politicians argued that "tough on crime" stances-including certain imprisonment and longer
sentences-would keep communities free of crime. However, the mass incarceration during
that period had little or no effect on official crime rates. Why do prisons tend to make people
think that their own rights and liberties are more secure than they would be if prisons did not
exist? People wanted to believe that prisons would not only reduce crime, they would also
provide jobs and stimulate economic development in out-of-the-way places.
We thus think about imprisonment as a fate reserved for others. The prison functions
ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the
responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which
prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers.
The prison is one of the most important features of our image environment. This has caused
us to take the existence of prisons for granted. The prison has become a key ingredient of
our common sense.
Until the creation of this new institution called the penitentiary, imprisonment served as a
prelude to punishment. People who were to be subjected to some form of corporal
punishment were detained in prison until the execution of the punishment. With the
penitentiary, incarceration became the punishment itself. It was regarded as rehabilitative
and the penitentiary prison was devised to provide convicts with the conditions for reflecting
on their crimes and, through penitence, for reshaping their habits and even their souls.
Although some antislavery advocates spoke out against this new system of punishment
during the revolutionary period, the penitentiary was generally viewed as a progressive
reform.
Incarceration within a penitentiary was assumed to be humane-at least far more humane
than the capital and corporal punishment inherited from England and other European
countries. Prior to the appearance of punitive incarceration, punishment was, in essence,
public spectacle. Imprisonment was not employed as a principal mode of punishment until
the eighteenth century in Europe and the nineteenth century in the United States. And
European prison systems were instituted in Asia and Africa as an important component of
colonial rule.
The process through which imprisonment developed into the primary mode of state-inflicted
punishment was very much related to the rise of capitalism and to the appearance of a new
set of ideological conditions. With the rise of the bourgeoisie, the individual came to be
regarded as a bearer of formal rights and liberties. If the individual was not perceived as
possessing inalienable rights and liberties, then the alienation of those rights and liberties by
removal from society to a space tyrannically governed by the state would not have made
sense.
The prison sentence, which is always computed in terms of time, is related to abstract
quantification. This was installed precisely during the historical period when the value of
labor began to be calculated in terms of time and therefore compensated in another
quantifiable way, by money. The computability of state punishment in terms of months-years
resonates with the role of labor-time as the basis for computing the value of capitalist
commodities.
Are prisons racist institutions? Is racism so deeply entrenched in the institution of the prison
that it is not possible to eliminate one without eliminating the other? One may perceive in the
penitentiary many reflections of chattel slavery as it was practiced in the South. Both
institutions subordinated their subjects to the will of others. Like Southern slaves, prison
inmates followed a daily routine specified by their superiors. Both institutions reduced their
subjects to dependence on others for the supply of basic human services such as food and
shelter. Both isolated their subjects from the general population by confining them to a fixed
habitat. And both frequently coerced their subjects to work, often for longer hours and for
less compensation than free laborers.
Punishment has not been without its gendered dimensions. Women were often punished
within the domestic domain, and instruments of torture were sometimes imported by
authorities into the household. In seventeenth-century Britain, women identified as
unaccepting of male dominance were punished by a headpiece with a chain attached and an
iron bit that was introduced into the woman's mouth. Although the branking of women was
often linked to a public parade, this contraption was sometimes hooked to a wall of the
house, where the punished woman remained until her husband decided to release her.
Convicts punished by imprisonment in emergent penitentiary systems were primarily male.
This reflected the deeply gender-biased structure of legal, political, and economic rights.
Since women were largely denied public status as rights-bearing individuals, they could not
be easily punished by the deprivation of such rights through imprisonment. As the prison
emerged and evolved as the major form of public punishment, women continued to be
routinely subjected to forms of punishment that have not been acknowledged as such.
Studies indicating that women have been even more likely to end up in mental facilities than
men suggest that while jails and prisons have been dominant institutions for the control of
men, mental institutions have served a similar purpose for women.
That deviant men have been constructed as criminal, while deviant women have been
constructed as insane. Regimes that reflect this assumption continue to inform the women's
prison. Psychiatric drugs continue to be distributed far more extensively to imprisoned
women than to their male counterparts. As the institutions to control criminality distinguished
the "criminal" from the "insane", the gendered distinction took hold and continued to
structure penal policies. When we consider the impact of class and race we can say that for
white and affluent women, this equalization tends to serve as evidence for emotional and
mental disorders, but for black and poor women, it has pointed to criminality.
Important aspects of the operation of state punishment are missed if it is assumed that
women are marginal and thus undeserving of attention. The most frequent justification for
the inattention to women prisoners and to the particular issues surrounding women's
imprisonment is the relatively small proportion of women among incarcerated populations
throughout the world. In most countries, the percentage of women among prison populations
hovers around five percent.
As the level of repression in women's prisons increases, sexual abuse —which, like
domestic violence, is yet another dimension of the privatized punishment of women-— has
become an institutionalized component of punishment behind prison walls. Although guard-
on-prisoner sexual abuse is not sanctioned as such, the widespread leniency with which
offending officers are treated suggests that for women, prison is a space in which the threat
of sexualized violence that looms in the larger society is effectively sanctioned as a routine
aspect of the landscape of punishment behind prison walls.
Sexual abuse is surreptitiously incorporated into one of the mast habitual aspects of
women's imprisonment, the strip search. As activists and prisoners themselves have painted
out, the state itself is directly implicated in this routinization of sexual abuse, bath in
permitting such conditions that render women vulnerable to explicit sexual coercion carried
aut by guards and other prison staff and by incorporating into routine policy such practices
as the strip search and body cavity search.
Today, aside from death, solitary confinement —next to torture, or as a form of torture— is
considered the worst form of punishment imaginable. Then, however, it was assumed to
have an emancipatory effect. Most of the reformers of that era were deeply religious and
therefore saw the architecture and of the penitentiary as emulating the architecture and
regimes of monastic life. Because of its more efficient labor practices, Auburn eventually
became the dominant model, both for the United States and Europe. This mode of prison
labor called for solitary cells but labor in common. Prisoners were allowed to be with each
other as they worked, but only under condition of silence.
The prevailing justification for the supermax is that the horrors it creates are the perfect
complement for the personalities deemed the worst of the worst by the prison system. In
other words, there is no pretense that rights are respected, there is no concern for the
individual, there is no sense that men and women incarcerated in supermaxes deserve
anything approaching respect and comfort. Prisoners confined in such facilities spend an
average of twenty-three hours a day in their cells, enduring extreme social isolation,
enforced idleness, and extraordinarily limited recreational and educational opportunities.
If the publication of Malcolm X's autobiography marks a pivotal moment in the development
of prison literature and a moment of vast promise for prisoners who try to make education a
major dimension of their time behind bars, contemporary prison practices are systematically
dashing those hopes. In the 1950s, Malcolm's prison education was a dramatic example of
prisoners' ability to turn their incarceration into a transformative experience. Even so, in
order to pursue this self-education, Malcolm had to work against the prison regime-he often
read on his cell floor, long after lights-out, by the glow of the corridor light. The contemporary
disestablishment of writing and other prison educational programs is indicative of the official
disregard today for rehabilitative strategies, particularly those that encourage individual
prisoners to acquire autonomy of the mind. Not long after educational programs were
disestablished, weights and bodybuilding equipment were also removed from most U.S.
prisons.
The term "prison industrial complex" was introduced by activists and scholars to contest
prevailing beliefs that increased levels of crime were the root cause of mounting prison
populations. Instead, they argued, prison construction and the attendant drive to fill these
new structures with human bodies have been driven by ideologies of racism and the pursuit
of profit. The relationship between the military industrial complex and the prison industrial
complex could be called symbiotic. These two complexes mutually support and promote
each other and, in fact, often share technologies. During the post-World War II period, for
example, medical experimentation on captive populations helped to hasten the development
of the pharmaceutical industry.
The notion of a prison industrial complex insists on understandings of the punishment
process that take into account economic and political structures and ideologies, rather than
focusing myopically on individual criminal conduct and efforts to "curb crime." The fact, for
example, that many corporations with global markets now rely on prisons as an important
source of profit helps us to understand the rapidity with which prisons began to proliferate
precisely at a time when official studies indicated that the crime rate was falling. The notion
of a prison industrial complex also insists that the racialization of prison populations is not an
incidental feature.
In arrangements reminiscent of the convict lease system, governments pay private
companies a fee for each inmate, which means that private companies have a stake in
retaining prisoners as long as possible, and in keeping their facilities filled. Though private
prisons represent a fairly small proportion of prisons in the United States, the privatization
model is quickly becoming the primary mode of organizing punishment in many other
countries. These companies have tried to take advantage of the expanding population of
women prisoners, both in the United States and globally.
The private prison business is only the most visible dimension of the prison industrial
complex, and it should not lead us to ignore the more comprehensive corporatization that is
a feature of contemporary punishment. Many "free world" corporations have discovered new
possibilities for expansion by selling their products to correctional facilities. The global prison
economy is indisputably dominated by the United States. This economy not only consists of
the products, services, and ideas that are directly marketed to other governments, but it also
exercises an enormous influence over the development of the style of state punishment
throughout the world.
A major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more humane,
habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison
system. If jails and prisons are to be abolished, then what will replace them? The first step
would be to let go of the desire to discover one single alternative system of punishment that
would occupy the same footprint as the prison system. What would it mean to imagine a
system in which punishment is not allowed to become the source of corporate profit? How
can we imagine a society in which race and class are not primary determinants of
punishment? Or one in which punishment itself is no longer the central concern in the
making of justice?
This more nuanced understanding of the social role of the punishment system requires us to
give up our usual way of thinking about punishment as an inevitable consequence of crime.
We would recognize that "punishment" does not follow from "crime" in the neat and logical
sequence offered by discourses that insist on the justice of imprisonment, but rather
punishment —primarily through imprisonment (and sometimes death)— is linked to the
agendas of politicians, the profit drive of corporations, and media representations of crime.
There is the question of how to treat those who assault the rights and bodies of others. Many
organizations and individuals both in the United States and other countries offer alternative
modes of making justice. In limited instances, some governments have attempted to
implement alternatives that range from conflict resolution to restorative or reparative justice.
Rather than try to imagine one single alternative to the existing system of incarceration, we
might envision an array of alternatives that will require radical transformations of many
aspects of our society. Alternatives that fail to address racism, male dominance,
homophobia, class bias, and other structures of domination will not lead to decarceration
and will not advance the goal of abolition.
There are currently more people with mental and emotional disorders in jails and prisons
than in mental institutions. This calls for new facilities designed to assist poor people, but
should not be taken as an appeal to reinstitute the old system of mental institutions, which
were —and in many cases still are— as repressive as the prisons. It makes sense to
consider the decriminalization of drug use: proposals to decriminalize drug use should be
linked to the development of a constellation of free, community-based programs accessible
to all people who wish to tackle their drug problems.
In the cases of drugs and sex work, decriminalization would simply require repeal of all those
laws that individuals who use drugs and who work in the sex industry. The decriminalization
of alcohol use serves as a historical example. A further challenge for abolitionists is to
identify other behaviors that might be appropriately decriminalized as preliminary steps
toward abolition. Programs for decriminalization will not only have to address specific
activities that have been criminalized-such as drug use and sex work-but also criminalized
populations and communities.
Violence against women cannot be solved by imprisoning women who fight back against
their abusers. Thus, a vast range of alternative strategies of minimizing violence against
women —within intimate relationships and within relationships to the state— should be the
focus of our concern. Another obvious and very urgent aspect of the work of
decriminalization is associated with the defense of immigrants' rights. This is only a small
selection of examples, which can also include job and living wage programs, alternatives to
the disestablished welfare program, community-based recreation, and many more.

En Argentina ya hay más de 100000 personas presas

0.22% - 100.000 personas - 53% con condena firme - más del 60% tiene menos de 33 años
- 67% sólo alcanzó los estudios primarios, el 43% no tenía trabajo al momento de la
detención y el 39% trabajaba de forma precaria.

CORREPI - Archivo 2019

Es imposible resumir en pocas palabras las iniciativas represivas del gobierno de

Cambiemos. Algunas fueron derrotadas con la movilización, como el protocolo antipiquete o
el corralito para encerrar a las y los trabajadores de prensa en manifestaciones. Otras, la
mayoría, fueron consagradas, como la declaración de emergencia nacional en seguridad
ciudadana, la profundización del uso de las herramientas para interceptar y detener
personas arbitrariamente, la militarización extrema de las barriadas populares, las reformas
represivas de la legislación penal, contravencional y procesal, la creación de la Policía de la
Ciudad, el “comando unificado” de fuerzas federales y locales para la intervención en
manifestaciones, el incremento de la presencia policial de civil y la infiltración y espionaje
sobre organizaciones y militantes.
A mediados del año 2017, la desaparición forzada y muerte de Santiago Maldonado y el
fusilamiento del joven mapuche Rafael Nahuel marcaron el inicio de una etapa superior de
la avanzada represiva del gobierno de Cambiemos. En el mismo cuadro hay que incluir el
“Informe sobre la RAM”, publicado por el Ministerio de Seguridad de la Nación junto a los
gobiernos de Chubut, Río Negro y Neuquén, plagado de inexactitudes y mentiras para
deslegitimar las luchas en todo el mundo por la liberación de los pueblos y convertir en el
“enemigo interno” a quienes las protagonizan o son solidarios y solidarias con ellas.
El gobierno de Macri y Bullrich nos deja un aparato de seguridad recargado, con las picanas
Taser y la doctrina Chocobar, consagrada en la resolución 956/2018 e incluida en el
proyecto de reforma del código penal; con nuestros pibes y pibas arrojados al “servicio
cívico voluntario en valores” de gendarmería; con el sistema de reconocimiento facial y la
resolución 845/2019 que masifican la intercepción, identificación y detención de personas
en los medios de transporte; con el hostigamiento y persecución constante a migrantes y a
quienes sobreviven con tareas precarias en la vía pública. Cambiemos nos deja 1.833
personas asesinadas por el aparato represivo estatal en 1.435 días de gobierno, con el
inédito promedio de una muerte a manos del aparato represivo cada 19 horas, y garantía de
impunidad.
CORREPI: Leyes antiterroristas

La sanción de la más reciente ley antiterrorista del gobierno peronista de los Kirchner, la
octava desde el inicio de su gestión, igual que las de 2003, 2005, 2007 y 2009, fue
propuesta y aprobada en tiempo record para cumplir servilmente con las directivas
impuestas por el Grupo de Acción Financiera Internacional (GAFI), uno de los organismos
"especializados" internacionales usados por el imperialismo para asegurar sus planes de
dominación. A través del GAFI, el FMI y otros organismos similares, el Departamento de
Estado yanqui y el Pentágono ejecutan los objetivos formulados a partir de los documentos
Santa Fe I y II, y ratificados, en las últimas décadas, en sus planes de seguridad para la
región. Así, buscan garantizar el apoderamiento de recursos naturales, el subsidio de su
propio déficit interno, la hegemonía en el comercio internacional y el control indiscriminado
de los recursos financieros mundiales, homogeneizando la legislación mundial y
adaptándola a su nueva versión de la Doctrina de la Seguridad Nacional, que denomina
"terrorista" al mismo enemigo que, décadas atrás, llamó "subversivo", y basa su acción, ya
no primordialmente en la intervención militar directa, sino en la defensa de la
“gobernabilidad democrática” sustentada por la “cooperación continental”.
El proyecto, que duplica las penas de cualquier delito cuando la intención del autor sea
"aterrorizar a la población u obligar a las autoridades públicas nacionales, o gobiernos
extranjeros, o agentes de una organización internacional, a realizar un acto o abstenerse de
hacerlo", ya es ley.

El delito es una construcción política, social y cultural - Maximiliano Postay

Con un grupo de abolicionistas presentamos un proyecto de ley que propone eliminar el

certificado de antecedentes penales. Porque es contradictorio que el Estado te diga que la
cárcel es para resocializarte, y después emita un certificado con el cual te pueden negar un
trabajo cuando te vas a reintegrar a la sociedad. Creamos un nuevo documento para
sustituirlo, que en vez de acreditar lo que hiciste y por lo que ya pagaste, informe todo
aquello que tenés pendiente con la Justicia penal. Se llamaría “Certificado de Información
Penal Socialmente Relevante”, y contendría las órdenes de captura vigentes, declaraciones
de rebeldía, o condenas pendientes de ejecución en una etapa anterior a la libertad
condicional.
¿Qué propone el abolicionismo ante los represores o los criminales? No es una discusión
prioritaria, porque el sistema penal no está pensado para perseguir a Jorge Rafael Videla, al
violador serial o al homicida incontrolable. El sistema penal es una máquina históricamente
aceitada para seleccionar a los sujetos vulnerables de la sociedad, catalogarlos como
peligrosos y a partir de ahí justificar todo su accionar. Los genocidas, los violadores y los
homicidas representan un porcentaje mínimo de la población carcelaria, que no hace a la
esencia del sistema penal. De los 65 mil presos que tenemos en Argentina, alrededor de 55
mil están por delitos contra la propiedad, por delitos emparentados con la ley de drogas, por
un delito culposo o un delito contra el orden público. Evitar un cuestionamiento radical por la
excepción y no por la regla es una lógica reduccionista, porque el abolicionismo no es una
receta sino un proceso en construcción permanente.

La nueva política migratoria argentina: control y exclusión

La ley de migraciones sancionada en Argentina en el 2003 y reglamentada siete años más

tarde, representó un gran avance respecto de la legislación anterior, heredada de la última
dictadura militar. La legislación se transformó en una referencia internacional, al reconocer
la migración como un derecho humano y garantizar a los inmigrantes derechos educativos,
sanitarios y laborales sin importar la condición reglamentaria en que se encuentren. A pesar
de esto, en enero de este año, el presidente Mauricio Macri sancionó un decreto que
modificó sustantivamente este marco jurídico, revirtiendo o suprimiendo algunos de sus
aspectos más significativos. La reforma impuesta por el presidente argentino dilata el plazo
necesario para acceder a la ciudadanía nacional, amplía las causas de denegación y de
cancelación de residencia en el país, así como amplía las de expulsión, debilita el derecho
de defensa, y extiende o acelera notablemente las posibilidades de detención de migrantes
sujetos a un trámite de expulsión.

Mil presos votarán el domingo

No todos los detenidos pueden votar. Están habilitados quienes no tienen condena firme. En
2016, la Cámara Nacional Electoral declaró inconstitucional esa prohibición y le pidió al
Congreso que modifique la ley. Pero todavía no se cambió. El proyecto de reforma al
Código Penal que ingresó en marzo al Parlamento contempla esa modificación.
"El derecho electoral constituye una expresión política legítima para que el colectivo de
condenados privados de libertad no quede excluido de todo tipo de participación
democrática. Resulta necesario poner fin a la situación de restricción del derecho electoral
de los condenados, si se desea la construcción de una sociedad global, democrática,
inclusiva y garante de la plena efectividad de los derechos humanos", sostuvo la
Procuración Penitenciaria de la Nación.
Solo votan quienes están detenidos en cárceles. No quienes se alojan en comisarías o
escuadrones de fuerzas de seguridad. "Deberían poder votar pero la logística en esos
casos es muy compleja", explicó a este medio un funcionario que trabaja en el tema.
Tampoco votan los detenidos en prisión domiciliaria, aunque no tengan una condena firme.

Mujeres en prisión - 2013

En muchos países del mundo, al igual que en Argentina, el número de mujeres que se
encuentran privadas de libertad ha ido aumentando y se ha incrementado de forma
desproporcionada en comparación con lo ocurrido con los hombres detenidos. En
Argentina, el número de mujeres detenidas en cárceles federales aumentó el 193%,
mientras que la población masculina creció el 111% desde el año 1990 hasta el año 2012.
Nuestro estudio reveló que el 55,75% de las mujeres encuestadas había sido procesada o
condenada por delitos relacionados con drogas. En el marco de la “guerra contra las
drogas”, Estados Unidos presionó a los países latinoamericanos para que incrementen la
persecución y el combate contra los delitos relacionados con las drogas.
Más del 85% de las mujeres consultadas fueron condenadas por delitos motivados por
razones económicas, los que incluyen delitos relacionados con drogas y robos. El Censo
Nacional argentino del año 2001 registró que las mujeres estaban a cargo del 81,75% de los
hogares monoparentales y la mayoría de estos hogares eran pobres. De aquellas mujeres
que cometieron delitos por motivos económicos, más del 75% representaban la fuente
primaria de ingresos en sus hogares.
Las severas normas argentinas que regulan la prisión preventiva, aplicadas en las causas
relacionadas con drogas, han contribuido también al elevado número de mujeres en prisión.
El 41,43% de las encuestadas estaba en prisión preventiva y, de esa cifra, el 63,44% había
sido imputada de delitos relacionados con drogas.
Las Reglas de Bangkok reconocen que “el número de reclusas que han sido víctimas de
violencia en el hogar es desproporcionado”.
Más de un tercio de las mujeres encuestadas informó que nunca se le practicó un examen
ginecológico “PAP” (prueba de Papanicolaou) y casi tres cuartas partes de las mujeres
consultadas señalaron que nunca se les realizó un estudio de cáncer de mama. El 26,46%
de las mujeres en prisión encuestadas sostuvo no haber tenido acceso suficiente a toallas
femeninas.
Más de la mitad de las mujeres encuestadas (53,71%) se encontraban detenidas a más de
100 km de su hogar y su familia; mientras que el 86,46% de quienes estaban privadas de su
libertad más cerca, de todos modos se encontraban al menos a 30 km de sus hogares.
Algunos países han diseñado “programas de cohabitación” (co-residence programs) para
afrontar esta situación, permitiendo que los niños residan junto con sus madres
encarceladas. Argentina permite que los niños de hasta 4 años de edad residan junto a sus
madres en prisión. En algunos lugares que poseen tales programas, como los Estados
Unidos, solo los bebés pueden residir en prisión.

El abolicionismo penal en América Latina