Abolish Never: A Marxian Critique of Penal Abolitionism in the Age of Mass Incarceration

• In Event: Mass Incarceration, Crowding and Overcrowding: International and National Data

Abstract

Penal abolitionists radically oppose mainstream mass incarceration reform perspectives. Abolitionists condemn incarceration as fundamentally unjust and impossible to reform, and thus call for the abolition of imprisonment and penal punishment. Yet penal abolitionism has neither affected mass incarceration nor influenced mainstream reform debates. This paper adopts a Marxian praxis perspective to challenge penal abolition’s claim as a viable radical penal reform movement. This Marxian perspective, with its philosophical approach to reality that is dialectical, historical-materialist, and humanist, recognizes penal abolitionism as a utopian and idealist deviation incapable of being a radical alternative to mainstream approaches to mass incarceration reform. This paper calls to abolish penal abolitionism and develop a radical penal reform and decarceration orientation, one informed by Marx’s praxis, to dismantle mass incarceration.

Author

• Paul Richard Schupp, Niagara University