Encyclopedia of Opinion
Question
Should prisons be abolished?
Position1 of 3›
Yes, prisons should be abolished
Argument1 of 3›

Prisons are immoral

If life was valued within prisons, then criminals would be less likely to hurt or take it away from others.

The argument

Prisoners are treated inhumanely during their time spent in incarceration. Many people have spoken out about the beatings, sexual assaults, and verbal attacks that happen behind prison walls, with the correctional officers often being the bully. That last detail is what makes the harm a feature of the institution rather than an unfortunate by-product of confining people together: when the abuse comes from the staff charged with preventing it, the authority meant to protect prisoners is the authority harming them, and there is no one inside the walls to appeal to. This behavior shows people their life is no longer valued after committing a crime. The conditions themselves carry the same message. In the United States, the East Mississippi Correctional Facility has been notorious for its ongoing abuse and mistreatment of prisoners and has been described as barbaric. The facility lacks basic needs for prisoners such as proper lighting and running toilets, deprivations that no court imposed as a punishment but that everyone held there serves in addition to their sentence. A large percentage of its inmates suffer from mental illness, yet do not receive the proper care they need, so the people least able to withstand those conditions are among those held in them. Inmates do not deserve endless abuse and cruelty while in incarceration. Instead, they should be treated with morality and as human beings, since a sentence removes a person's liberty and not their standing as a person. The continuing mistreatment only repeats the cycle of violence and incarceration, teaching that violence is what power is for and returning people to society having learned it. Because prisons work this way, prisons should be abolished.

Premises

[P1]Prisoners are routinely treated inhumanely — subjected to beatings, sexual assaults, and verbal abuse, often by the correctional officers themselves — signalling that their lives are no longer valued after conviction. [P2] Facilities like Mississippi's East Mississippi Correctional Facility, described as barbaric, lack basic needs such as proper lighting and working toilets and fail to treat the many inmates with mental illness, and this cruelty only repeats the cycle of violence and incarceration. [C] Because prisons subject human beings to this immoral abuse, prisons should be abolished.

Counter-arguments

Some people have committed crimes so violent and inhumane that they deserve to be incarcerated. Murders, rapists, and other violent people can never function normally in a free world and should be in prison to protect the rest of the population. Completely abolishing prisons may stop the immoral treatment of inmates, but it creates a more dangerous society for innocent people.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P4] Violent criminals cannot integrate into mainstream society without causing harm to others.