Trans campaigners want to abolish prisons - wonder why?

[stumbledin]

... Mermaids, Stonewall, Be:North, CliniQ, Consortium, Galop, Gendered Intelligence, GIRES, and Sparkle have partnered together with the aim of creating “lasting change for trans communities in healthcare and criminal justice systems.” The working group published three “community engagement reports” for their TRANSforming Futures series after listening to “a diverse range of trans people in England.” Continue reading The Prison System is Transphobic and Must be Abolished, Say Transgender Activists | Women Are Human.

... Participants are calling to abolish prisons, explaining that “work on abolition directly confronts criminalisation of trans communities.”

... The report does not provide suggestions on how to manage such violent and sexual predators as murderers, rapists and child rapists in the absence of a prison system. ...

(So male prisoners who have been found guilty of violence against women can now trans(fer) to a women's prison, and in the future not do any prison time at all. Really??)

Info from www.womenarehuman.com/prisons-are-transphobic-and-must-be-abolished-say-transgender-activists/

Link to the actual pamphlet www.transformingfuturespartnership.co.uk/criminal-justice funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.

MissBarbary

"BLM wants that too."

Judging by the demonstrations in the US, they want total anarchy, a dismantling of every institution.

"Prisons are unjust let's abolish them"

It's certainly strange that some on the harder left don't think through the real-world consequences of what they are suggesting.

I don't know. Maybe they think, well if only you put all their socialist doctrine into practice, then you would have a paradise, and no need for prisons anymore. Everyone would be well behaved. Rather than, crimes go unpunished causing lots of misery for the population and people fairly quickly turn vigilante and start dealing out the punishments themselves.

@WarOnWomen

Abolish prisons. Just when you think that things can't get any nuttier, it does. It's the same as the BLM manifesto, isn't it?

I don’t know what is in the official BLM manifesto, but the police in America are always armed and often called in to solve social rather than criminal problems. This has predictable results. The badly worded ‘defund the police’ slogan was intended to be a call to fund more wisely and increase funding for other services.

Similarly women tend to be imprisoned for minor offences, but the consequences of having been to prison - children put into care? are hard to undo.

All these discussions about prison and the police need nuance.

Judging by the demonstrations in the US, they want total anarchy, a dismantling of every institution.

Judging by more recent demonstrations, other groups should be more of a concern, to put it mildly.

[quote Xoxoxoxoxoxox]I think they should close many (not all) women's prisons in favour of restraining orders. Short prison sentences are very expensive and reoffending rates are very high. Female prisoners are responsible for childcare- nearly all children who's mothers are sent to prison are uprooted from their homes. This does not affect men who's children do not get taken into care during a 3 month stay in prison for a male prisoner.

The fact that Trans women are now being included in female prison statistics is undermining this effort already. Their crimes are in line with those of the male estate, sex crimes, violent crimes, now included in the data for female prisoners which doesn't help the case for reform on the grounds that women's crimes are mainly non-violent.
Now with this new Trans campaign s just going to overwhelm and drown out this campaign and to centre trans issues, as has happened to all the other female centred issues over the last few years.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/women-prison-mothers-children-jail-homes-reform-trust-a8430786.html[/quote]
This are my concerns too. Campaigns for women are being undermined from several angles.

Why are Mermaids, a children's charity, interested in abolishing prisons?

Judging by more recent demonstrations, other groups should be more of a concern, to put it mildly.

The BLM stuff caused a lot more deaths and property damage as far as I'm aware. Also, you had politicians like Joe Biden refusing to really condemn antifa violence, and Kamala Harris helping to bail out rioters.

The BLM stuff caused a lot more deaths and property damage as far as I'm aware.

I don't know the comparative statistics, but there were no violent attacks on the centre of Government specifically designed to overthrow a presidential election.

you had politicians like Joe Biden refusing to really condemn antifa violence

Nope.

www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-biden-condemned-antifa-idUSKBN2712ZA

This is the background to your claim about Kamala Harris

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/03/kamala-harris-tweeted-support-bail-fund-money-didnt-just-assist-protestors/

She tweeted support for an organisation that attempts to redress inequities in the justice system for people who cannot afford bail. You might feel the organisation's approach is wrong, but it's difficult to argue that it's worse than Trump's offer to sort out the legal bills of people who commit violence at his rallies. It's certainly not worse than what Trump did on January 6th.

I know this is a bit of a derail, but but ill thought out comments about BLM and Antifa harm feminists fighting for sex based rights.

@merrymouse thanks!

@Rubidium

Why are Mermaids, a children's charity, interested in abolishing prisons?

Perhaps Susie Green has been influenced by Jess Bradley, who I believe is a keen prison abolitionist. They both gave evidence to the government's trans inquiry.

merrymouse

"Judging by more recent demonstrations, other groups should be more of a concern, to put it mildly."

Couldn't agree more - far left and far right are different sides of the same coin.

@andyoldlabour

There are clearly some very serious psychological and mental issues going on with anyone who wants to see prisons abolished. It really is that simple.

Sorry are you saying Anegla Davis, and the many other often black feminists who have called for prison abolition have a mental health condition or a personality disorder?

Are you qualified to make such a diagnosis? And do you consider that someone having a mental health condition invalidates any political opinions they might have?

You're like a bully in the playground going you're mental haha.

I’m going to take a slightly different tack to this than those here have so far.
I think this is excellent.
Considering the UK public are generally quite keen on a bit of retributive justice, especially for sex offenders or those who prey on the truly vulnerable, high profile organisations clubbing together to campaign for something as ridiculous as prison abolition is going to be about as popular as finding a cockroach in their cornflakes.
I hope their campaign sees lots of publicity. It won’t do them any good whatsoever. ☺️

Sorry are you saying Anegla Davis, and the many other often black feminists who have called for prison abolition have a mental health condition or a personality disorder?

I suspect you, jj are misrepresenting Angela Davis and the deliberate use of the word 'abolition' to make a link with abolitionist anti-slavery movements.

This is one of the things she has said:

"Armed human beings, officially trained in efficient methods of administering death and violence, should not be dispatched in response to a Black woman experiencing an episode related to a psychiatric disability."

As far as I know we don't routinely solve problems by sending people with guns in the UK.

I don't know whether she has said that people should never be restrained, but she is clearly approaching this problem from a very specific angle.

By conflating the two you, jj, not anyoldlabour are doing her an injustice.

It’s almost like some members of the trans community commit crimes so fucking abhorrent that even criminals treat them with disdain and disgust, naturally they are better off arguing for the abolition of prisons rather than NOT COMMITTING CRIMES.

I’m fucking done with TRAs today.

@jj1968 again, you don't seem to have a detailed grasp of what Davis actually campaigned for. If you think it was simply the abolition of prisons you haven't read below the headline. She is a far, far more complex agitator/campaignor than that.

Couldn't agree more - far left and far right are different sides of the same coin.

Absolutely, the far left's end goal is that all wealth should be collectively held and used for the benefit of everyone and that oppression based on sex, race, disability, sexuality and gender should be eradicated, as should all forms of economic exploitation and war. In such circumstances it is believed the state would melt away or be dismantled as no longer necessary due to the creation of bottom up political structures based on consensus and mass participation.

The far right's end goal is a totalitarian ethno-state led by an unelected dictator in which political power and social role is based on race and sex, sexual minorities are eliminated, women are forcibly confined to the domestic sphere, state pogroms are launched against certain ethnic groups possibly resulting in mass murder, all dissent is forbidden and punished with violence and the country lives in a state of permanent war both within and abroad in order to sustain the national myth and militarise society.

They are literally exactly the same, I don't understand why more people can't see it.

Because history shows jj, that the promise of your first paragraph leads to the second, and women always lose.

www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53220713

They are literally exactly the same, I don't understand why more people can't see it.Oh stupid wimmins, look, a prophet, unheard, not honoured in their own land!

@Vermeil

I’m going to take a slightly different tack to this than those here have so far. I think this is excellent. Considering the UK public are generally quite keen on a bit of retributive justice, especially for sex offenders or those who prey on the truly vulnerable, high profile organisations clubbing together to campaign for something as ridiculous as prison abolition is going to be about as popular as finding a cockroach in their cornflakes. I hope their campaign sees lots of publicity. It won’t do them any good whatsoever. ☺️

Excellent point. As we've seen in recent weeks, the more exposure there is of these ideas, the more the public speak out. I thought it was odd (to put it mildly) when MPs starting advocating that rapists and paedophiles must be placed in women's prisons if they self identified as women. Imagine standing on a platform that these same individuals shouldn't actually be in prison. While simultaneously arguing at length for the criminalisation of thoughts and perfectly legal opinions as hate speech. The twisting, turning and spinning around is scrambling logic to a glorious extent. The arguments become positively Trumpian in their madness .

Absolutely, the far left's end goal is that all wealth should be collectively held and used for the benefit of everyone and that oppression based on sex, race, disability, sexuality and gender should be eradicated, as should all forms of economic exploitation and war. In such circumstances it is believed the state would melt away or be dismantled as no longer necessary due to the creation of bottom up political structures based on consensus and mass participation.

And of course, we've already seen this happen in countries such as the USSR and China.

Anyone simply calling for prison abolition has a few screws loose. I like to see people who are problematic for some other reason getting behind that just like I'm pleased if they become anti-vaxxers or start reporting that they were probed during an alien abduction.

[quote CuriousaboutSamphire]@jj1968 again, you don't seem to have a detailed grasp of what Davis actually campaigned for. If you think it was simply the abolition of prisons you haven't read below the headline. She is a far, far more complex agitator/campaignor than that.[/quote]
Handily she wrote a book about precisely this subject and which is available free online so people can read it and make up their own minds; www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf

[quote merrymouse]Because history shows jj, that the promise of your first paragraph leads to the second, and women always lose.

www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53220713[/quote]
History doesn't always show that, but I agree the Marxist/Leninist revolutionary movements of the last century failed with horrifying results. That's why I'm not a Marxist/Leninist.

But also in Europe the legacy of militant communist organising are things like the NHS, the welfare state, the Equal Pay Act, universal education etc. The legacy of Nazism and Fascism is just racism, abandoned concentration camps and misery. This reflects the different intentions of the two political currents.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

They are literally exactly the same, I don't understand why more people can't see it.Oh stupid wimmins, look, a prophet, unheard, not honoured in their own land!

I suspect AndyOldLabour is a man.