Should prisons be abolished?

The prison system targets people of color

Question: Should prisons be abolished?
Position‹3 of 3: Prisons should be reformed
Argument1 of 3›: The prison system targets people of color

There is an enormous amount of racial disparity in the prison system, specifically the United State's in particular.

The argument

The American criminal justice system targets minority races both in and outside of prison. African Americans are more likely to be pulled over, searched, and arrested than any other race, and that sequence matters: each stage feeds the next, so a disparity introduced at the roadside is carried forward into every count that follows. In some states, people of color represent most of the population within prisons but only a minority of the general public. A system that produces a prison population so unlike the society it draws from is not distributing punishment according to conduct alone, and it needs to be reformed to treat every person equally, no matter their race. The pattern begins long before adulthood. Black children are five times more likely to be incarcerated in juvenile detention centers than white children, and the consequences of that early contact compound over a lifetime. Having a criminal record before adulthood makes it more difficult to obtain higher education or find stable employment, and it increases the likelihood of being incarcerated again — so an early encounter with the system removes precisely the routes out of it. Children of minority races are targeted more by law enforcement despite no evidence of illegal activity, which means the disparity cannot be explained by what those children have done. People of color are more likely to be targeted for incarceration, proving the criminal justice system is not equal or fair. That conclusion supports reform rather than abolition, because the fault identified here is not that societies punish crime but that this system punishes unequally — a defect in how the institution operates, which can be corrected by changing how it operates. It is unfair to imprison people based on their race, so the prison system needs to be reformed to show equality and fairness for all inmates.

Premises

[P1]The current prison system disproportionately targets and incarcerates people of color, from juvenile detention through adult imprisonment. [P2] This racial disparity makes the criminal justice system unfair and inflicts lasting harms like reduced access to education and employment on minority communities. [P3] An unjust system that can be made fair through changes in policy and practice should be reformed rather than discarded entirely. [C] Therefore, prisons should be reformed to ensure equal and fair treatment regardless of race.

Counter-arguments

In recent years, the racial gap in prison populations has decreased to reflect a more realistic population. The number of black prisoners has drastically declined and only outnumber white inmates marginally. The recent decline in overall prison populations and minority prisoners has almost evened all races in incarceration.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The counter disputes the present-tense claim, holding that the racial gap in prison populations has narrowed in recent years to something closer to the wider population, with the number of Black prisoners falling sharply and now exceeding the number of white inmates only marginally. [Rejecting P2] If the disparity has largely closed, the ongoing unfairness the premise attributes to it loses its basis — on this account the overall decline in prison numbers alongside the fall in minority prisoners has brought incarceration close to even across races.