In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Jim Hanink, Mario Ramos-Reyes, and Christopher Zehnder speak with Rebecca Ginsburg on prison abolition.

1. Isn’t it true that prisons keep us safe?
2. How do you imagine abolition working? Would we wait until we had a new system to put into place, and simply replace all the prisons?
3. One of the main objections that many people have to incarceration is its disproportionate impact on racial minorities and poor people. What makes you think that any other response to wrongdoing wouldn’t have the same, very serious weaknesses?
4. It might be desirable to incarcerate fewer individuals who have been convicted of non-violent offenses, but don’t we need prisons to lock up those who have convicted serious harms such as murder?
5. Is your opposition to mass incarceration (i.e. the hyper-racialized, frequently corrupted industry that governs in most states), or to prisons themselves? If we could “fix” prisons, would you support that?
6. What about Norwegian prisons? Are they a possible model? (e.g. more comfortable surroundings, trained and educated correctional officers, no solitary)
7. What about all the people that are currently employed or supported by our system of imprisonment?
8. Abolitionists often talk about creating societies in which harm doesn’t happen because communities are better resourced with schools, mental health services, parks, maternal health care, substance abuse clinics, etc. However, it seems utopian to believe that we (or anybody) can create a society without crime or violence. Your response?
9. Do you also support abolishing the police?
10. Angela Davis is often quoted as saying, “prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.” Could you explain what you understand her to mean by that?
11. What might public safety public policy informed by abolition values look like?