For me, it’s pretty clear that police and prisons reinforce class society and are things that factor into proletarianization. Therefore there can be no socialism without abolition. A corollary states that socialist projects that reinstituted police and prisons (gulags and checka anyone?) couldn’t be socialist because by using police and prisons it reinforced proletarianization and class relations.

What do you think?

  • That doesn’t sound right. The abolitionists I follow absolutely do want to abolish not just policing and incarceration but everything that stands in the way of true safety and what causes people to commit crimes. These include cisheteropatriarchy, settler-colonialism, racism, capitalism, heck many even want to abolish the state.