Emptying Cages: From Animal Abolition to Prison Abolition

This is the text of a presentation given at the 2010 Institute for Critical Animal Studies Conference.

I am always shocked and saddened when I hear yet another story about an activist who has been arrested and put in prison.  We heard earlier today about the Green Scare, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, the unconstitutionality of the laws that exist to put our comrades behind bars – and, yet, every time that happens, I am stunned.  I mean, these are our friends, our colleagues, our family members.  Some of them are finding themselves locked up for ten, fifteen, twenty years.  Our criminal justice system, clearly, is wreaking havoc on the hearts and minds of the people fighting for change for animals, and their families.

Maybe I’m always so shocked because as a relatively privileged person, it’s not likely that many of my closest friends and family members will end up in jail.  It’s only really through this road of animal activism that I’ve had any brushes with law enforcement.  But the prison-industrial complex has been thriving for years on striking that same fear into the hearts, minds, and families of poor people, of communities of color, and gender non-conforming individuals long before the advent of the Green Scare.

I am one of the founders of a group whose opposition to violence is so central to the work that we do that we have actually chosen to incorporate it into the very name of our collective – Living Opposed to Violence and Exploitation.  And yet, the act of calling the police on someone, the act of putting someone in jail – in a cage – is not widely viewed as the act of violence that it is.  In fact, there are some animal advocacy organizations calling for stricter penalties and harsher punishments for animal cruelty.  Of course, we all want to see the end to animal abuse and exploitation, but is putting people in jail – overwhelmingly, people who are already oppressed by the same systems of power and privilege that allow animals to be abused – really the solution?  Does incarceration actually address the broader societal issues of animal exploitation?

The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the history of the world.  One in every 100 adult Americans is in jail.  While the United States has just five percent of the world’s population, it is home to 25% of the world’s prisoners.  These numbers are startling.

I’m going to posit that the U.S. criminal justice system – the Prison-Industrial Complex – serves as a political tool to keep poor people, people of color, and gender non-conforming people under the control of those in power.  It’s a well-oiled machine of oppression that systematically denies people wealth, value, and freedom.  And it is not something I, as a vegan and animal advocate, can endorse.  It feels imperative to me to be working to empty the cages that confine and repress all animals, including humans.

Before I started researching prison abolition, in fact, before I was much of an activist, I had this idea that law enforcement and incarceration existed to keep us safe.  That notion was eroded slowly over time, as I saw abuse of police power at demonstrations, as I watched friends get locked up for having the audacity to speak out against unjust systems, and as I started seeing the parallels between animal oppression and human oppression.  But I still didn’t really know what to do otherwise.  What about the “criminals” who are imprisoned and thus not on the streets?  Isn’t that a sign that the system is working?

As it turns out, prison operates a lot differently than what is told to us through the dominant cultural narrative.  Of the 2.3 million people in prison in the United States, about 1% of those people are actually there for a “violent crime” – the rest are typically related to drug charges, fraud, or other minor offenses.  I don’t think that the solution to poverty or drug addiction is to lock people in cages, but this is exactly what we’re doing.

What’s more, the incarceration of millions of people has done very little to deter future crime.   Women are still afraid to walk down the street.  Families are still torn apart by violence.

Prisons are not about reducing harm in our communities and in fact, imprisonment actually serves to destabilize our communities.  Prisons are violent institutions that only perpetuate violence, and prisons as a public policy solution have failed to create safe communities.  They do nothing to address the cultural conditions that lead to so-called criminal behavior.

Over 500,000 of the people currently languishing in U.S. prisons are there because they simply can’t afford to post their bail.  They’ve been judged not a threat to society and have not been found guilty of anything, but are stuck in prison for the months it takes for their case to wind through the court system because they can’t afford the bail fee.

Class and wealth play a huge role in the “who” of prison.  Approximately 30% of women arrested had been receiving public assistance before their arrest.  Fewer than 40% of women had held a full-time job prior to their arrest, and 2/3 of women under supervision – either in jail, on probation, or on parole – had never held a job making more than $6.50 per hour.  Opportunities to get education or employment while in prison are severely limited, if available at all, which ensures that inmates will continue to be poor even after they are released.

More than 60% of the people in prison are people of color.  Compare that to the ethnic composition of the United States: less than 45% of the population identifies as non-white.  There’s a huge disparity here.   For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is behind bars on any given day.  Three-fourths of people in jail for drug offenses are people of color.   At this point, you have young Black and Latino men just assuming that one day, they will go to prison.  It tears apart their families, it hobbles them in terms of future opportunities, and it does very little to actually deter crime.

Women in prison also face incredible challenges.  By the end of 2006, over 112,000 women were behind bars, compared to 44,000 women imprisoned in 1990.  Women of color, like men of color, are actually overrepresented in the prison system.  Women’s individual histories of trauma and abuse also makes prison an incredibly hostile environment, and guards often take advantage of the power dynamic between guard and inmate.  Barriers to health care, especially female-related health issues, like reproduction, breast cancer, and childbirth, can make prison a deadly experience for women.

Trans- and gender non-conforming individuals face even more opposition in prison, as they are often housed with people of opposite genders, are denied medical care and treatment, and are assaulted and harassed simply for their gender identity or gender expression.  Because it’s still legal in most places to discriminate against trans-identified people, it can literally be impossible for these individuals to go to school, get a job, or otherwise support themselves.  Prison seems almost inevitable when the deck is so stacked against them.

Whenever I talk about prison abolition – or the idea that criminalization is not the solution to society’s problems – people inevitably ask, “if not prison, then what?”  I ask myself that question all the time, too.  The idea of incarceration is so ingrained in our societal narrative that we have difficulty visualizing any other way to keep the peace.  Two really important considerations have helped me to embrace the idea of abolition and encouraged me to work toward a different model:

1)    There is a lot of violence and “crime” being committed that goes unpunished, and a system that doesn’t address all violence equally is one that I cannot endorse.  For example, in 2008, a number of slaughterhouse workers in California were sentenced to jail time for the abuse of animals in their facility.  Some of these people were undocumented workers, who will be deported once their jail time is served.  However, what about the executives at the top of those corporations, whose orders directly result in the murder of billions of animals every year?  Why are they allowed to exploit those workers?  And why, instead of getting punished, are they some of the richest folks in the country?
2)    There is a lot of violence occurring within the U.S. prison system.   Sexual assault and murder run rampant through prisons and jails.  Prisoners are denied adequate health care, opportunities to make contact with their friends and families, education, and income.  Women are physically shackled to tables and beds during childbirth.  Immigrants are deported to countries in which they may know no one after serving their jail sentences here.  It’s a system that completely devalues the lives and bodies of the people struggling within its walls.

I have a really nice quote from Andy Stepanian, one of the SHAC7 activists, who served two years and seven months in prison for “conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act.”  Andy says that he doesn’t believe incarcerating either social justice activists or animal abusers is the answer to society’s woes.  “I oppose the prison industrial complex and all forms of oppression. I don’t relish seeing a single piece of kindling thrown into that fire no matter how despicable the animal-abusing wretch is.” Andy views cruelty to animals as a sickness that is exacerbated when the abuser is behind bars. “I think we need to get proactive in healing our culture’s illnesses, and in turn these abusers — whom I see as symptomatic — will be a less-frequent phenomenon.”

But how will we be safe without prisons?  Take a minute and think about what makes you feel safe — your home?  Your family?  Your friends?  While some people may say that prisons and police in your community make you feel safe, many of us most impacted by prisons and policing will not.  In fact, the Prison-Industrial Complex has stolen those very things from millions of people.  We see that prisons and rampant policing have served to destabilize our communities — removing family members from our communities, draining resources for essential social services, and pushing us to fear each other.

Of course, the notion of abolishing prisons is, admittedly, ambitious.  I think a lot of people are really exhausted by the idea of doing all this work, just as the task of bringing about a vegan world can feel so daunting to those of us working toward change for animals.  It’s easy, unfortunately, to think, “Well, this will never happen in my lifetime.”  But that line of thinking is so dangerous.  I’ve watched veganism get co-opted by organizations looking to make a dollar and declare victories – we’re pushing for alternative methods OF exploitation, like humane farms, instead of alternatives TO exploitation.  And prison reform feels that way to me as well.  I think the best way to advocate for prisoners and to make their lives better is to get them out.  A system that puts people into cages is no more ok by me than a system that ultimately kills animals for our enjoyment.  Neither of those can exist in a vegan world.

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