The bad thing isn’t cats for prisoners. Cats are cute!
The bad thing is prisons. Prisons don’t work, don’t make us safer and are really about controlling the population because the State would rather prosecure thieves than fix poverty, would rather lock up a fraction of rapists than fix sexism, would rather lock up people of color for minor drug offenses than fix racism, etc. Prisons don’t make our society safer, they just make the people in power safer because it’s something they can use against us when we get weird ideas about having a right to real freedom from their rule.
Communities where there is justice and freedom from need are perfectly capable of solving disputes and harmful behaviour without relying on punishment. There has already been a lot of writing on this so there’s some stuff below.
So about cats:
When there are projects like cats for prisoners, art for prisoners, theatre for prisoners, I’m generally happy that prisoners are getting one less crappy thing in their life. But the way they are presented are as things that will make the existence of prison okay. They’re not. No amount of cute cats and art programs will change a prison into a helpful institution. They’re still places that disappear human beings rather than fix societies’ problems.
What’s more, these projects are almost always immediately used as another form of coercion. Prisoners don’t get a cat, period. They get a cat as long as they behave the way the prison wants and that cat can be taken away as punishment. It’s just one more way of controlling people.
In the end these projects are not really about helping prisoners at all, they’re about us who read the news articles. They’re about maintaining the lie that prisons are humane places with a few minor flaws that can be reformed. They’re absolutely not. We don’t need prison reform, we need prison abolition.
Reading list: (and some stuff to watch)
- Peter Gelderloos – The Function of Prisons https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-function-of-prison
- Victoria Law’s “Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women” http://resistancebehindbars.org/“Prisons Will Not Protect You”, an anthology by the radical LGBTQ group “Against Equality" http://www.againstequality.org/stuff/against-equality-prisons-will-not-protect-you/“Alternatives to Police” by Rose City Copwatch http://cobp.resist.ca/sites/cobp.resist.ca/files/alternatives-to-police-web.pdf
- “Prison Abolition is Practical” by Nathan Goodman [me] http://c4ss.org/content/20326
- “Abolish the Police” by Anthony Gregory http://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/05/anthony-gregory/abolish-the-police/
- Dean Spade on “Crime and Punishment” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia5vuHdBtz4
- Ruth Wilson Gilmore “Don’t Reform Prisons, Abolish Them” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akirVY5Mqsg
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Critical Resistance http://criticalresistance.org/
- The Anarchist Black Cross http://www.abcf.net/
- The Audre Lorde Project’s Safe OUTside the System Collective http://alp.org/community/sos
- http://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/05/anthony-gregory/abolish-the-police/
- “Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons” by Victoria Law http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlozk7G-JYo
- TGI (Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex) Justice Project http://www.tgijp.org/
- INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence http://www.incite-national.org/
- Peter Kropotkin – Are Prisons Necessary https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-prisons-necessary
- Much more: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/prison
(Source: http://kinkykinkshamer.tumblr.com/post/69512975149/prison-abolition-resources)
QueerAnarchism 