Liberation
Abolition in large part will work just as simply as it sounds.
Most crimes Black people are currently incarcerated for are non-violent crimes of vice or poverty.(1) In reality they need not be crimes at all. For example, studies show that treating drug addiction as a medical health issue instead of a criminal justice issue is far more successful at reducing drug use.(2) Similarly, theft and property crimes can be dealt with by restorative measures rather than incarceration. Of course theft by rich white people is already largely decriminalized. Not one banker is in jail for causing the worst financial crisis since the great depression. Violent crimes like murder and rape can be investigated by non-police bodies and resolved by community produced solutions.(3) The cost of incarcerating a person in California, per year, is now more than the cost of tuition, room, and board, for a year at Harvard University.(4) Those funds, re-appropriated by the Black community instead of used by the state for punitive measures, would give our communities the resources we need to begin to free ourselves from the cycle of colonial violence.
Of course these measures will not be forthcoming from the state itself or its representatives. To achieve this we must struggle. One measure communities are already taking is to undermine the authority and power of the police by building alternatives to 911.(5) These hotlines connect people to rapid response groups trained to respond to a number of situations for which people would normally call the police, such as mental health episodes. Black people with mental illness are the most likely Black people to be killed by police.(6) By taking away the initiative of the police and reclaiming our autonomy, communities across the country are saving Black lives by beginning the process of abolition.
While the struggles of Black people in the United States form a multifaceted complex of oppression, from queer to straight, woman to man, incarcerated by bars to incarcerated by poverty; the colonial regime of mass incarceration unifies and reinforces that oppression. Abolition is a unifying strategy that strikes at the heart of this system. We must fight to build autonomous communities with the conscious aim of destroying patriarchy and white supremacy. By building alternative social structures based in restorative justice and the solidarity economy. By redistributing as much wealth as possible to investment into these community based structures, we will create zones of liberation.
References
1: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html
2: Volkow ND, Poznyak V, Saxena S, Gerra G, UNODC‐WHO Informal International Scientific Network. Drug use disorders: impact of a public health rather than a criminal justice approach. World Psychiatry. 2017;16(2):213-214. doi:10.1002/wps.20428.
3: VITALE, ALEX. END OF POLICING. VERSO, 2018.
4:http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-prison-costs-20170604-htmlstory.html
5: https://thebasebk.org/rapid-response-network-assembly/
6:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/22/police-killings-disabled-black-people-mental-illness