If the conditions that produce offending are left in place, abolition only moves the problem

The argument

A second argument for this reading is a warning drawn from how institutions behave when one of them closes. Proponents point out that where places of confinement have been shut without building what was meant to replace them, the people held in them did not disappear: they turned up in other systems, in emergency medicine, in hostels and on the street, and often back in custody under a different heading. The lesson drawn is that removing the institution does nothing about the demand that filled it, and that a programme of abolition which stops at closure converts a visible population into a dispersed one. On this account the real content of a world without prisons is everything built before the closing. Proponents argue it would require treatment for addiction and mental illness that is available on request rather than after arrest, schools equipped to keep the pupils most likely to be excluded, work that offers an alternative to the informal economy, and housing that does not collapse at the first crisis. Each of these is expensive and slow, and each is the thing that would have to exist for the prison to have nothing to hold. Proponents also argue this is what makes the reading practical rather than utopian. It does not require agreement that punishment is wrong, only the observation that a society which wanted fewer prisoners would have to intervene earlier, and that provision at the earlier stage is what prevents cases arriving at the later one. The question of what a world without prisons would look like is then answered concretely: it would look like a society with the services and opportunities that make imprisonment a response to a rare failure rather than a routine destination, and reaching it is social policy rather than criminal justice reform.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that this makes abolition conditional on a transformation no society has achieved, which in practice defends the prison indefinitely: if nothing can change until deprivation is solved, the institution is safe. They also argue the earlier intervention claim is asserted rather than shown, since services reach people who would never have offended as well as those who would, and the saving at the later stage is therefore uncertain. A further objection is that the reading leaves the institution itself uncriticised. Those who want prisons gone usually object to what confinement does to people, and that objection holds whether or not the surrounding conditions improve, so treating social policy as the whole answer sets aside the strongest reason given for asking the question.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Closures that dispersed the people confined were failures of planning and funding, which argues for building replacements rather than for keeping the institution. [Rejecting P2] Demand for confinement is not fixed, since what counts as an offence and what is done about it are decisions, so removing the institution can reduce the demand as well as displace it. [Rejecting P3] Making abolition wait on treatment, schooling, work and housing all being in place defends the prison indefinitely, because that condition is never satisfied. [Rejecting C] The reading also leaves the institution uncriticised, when the objection to what confinement does to people holds whether or not surrounding conditions improve.