positions

against prison
The following is a brief but thorough statement on pris-
ons and those who would contest them. It offers a broad
critique of many commonly-held assumptions and posi-
tions that could characterize leftist and anarchist political
practice with regard to prison and prisoners. In particular
we chose to reprint the article here (it originally appeared
in the magazine Fire to the Prisons #10) because of its
poignant criticism of the prison “aboltionist” movement
which has grown in the last few years.

Whille we recognize that not all prison abolition-
ists are the same, this movement has predominantly por-
trayed itself as an attempt to “shrink” the Prison-Industrial
Complex into non-existence while gradlually replacing the
prison with other less brutal (but, inevitably, state-con-
trolled or sanctioned) insitutions. This means ot so much
the dissapearance of prisons but the permeation of their
mechanisms (constant surveilance, the miltarization of
police, etc.) throughout all of society. It indicates not
prison abolition but prison ablation: the removal of one
aspect of an oppressive body politic while all the struc-
tures that gave rise to it remain.

Unfortunately, some anarchists have taken up not
only the rhetoric of the prison abolitionist movement, but
even its methods: policy campaigns, the negotiation of
demands, the separation of political from social prison-
ers, appeals to amnesty and innocence, the avoidance of
engaging with actually rebellious prisoners on the inside.
In other words, those tactics characteristic of a gradualist
approach.

As revolutionaries, we believe there are other
options. As demonstrated by recent waves of demon-
strations outside jails and prisons which declare proudly
“Free All Prisoners,” not to mention the massive strike
that shook Georgia prisons last December, or even the
repeatedlly successful attacks upon immigrant detention
centers in ltaly, there are other ways to attack the prison
that do not necessitate capitulation o ablation. We print
this in the hope that such methods will spread, and the
ideas behind them willfind good soilin which to grow.

~the NC Piece Corps
Take your Mark, Get Readly, Ablate:

3 Positions
Against Prison

by August O'Clairre
| J
There are no political
I am not a crook.” -- Richard M. Nixon

Beaween the realm of criminality and that of the political there s
awide chasm. Politcians make the aw, criminals break it In this
conte, the idea ofthe political prisoner emerges as a contradiction
i terms. In fact,the contradiction is so fundamental that i o

the basis for many appeals for the liberation of politcal prisoners.
“The argument is made that political prisoners are a special class of
prisoner who e not criminals a all, but people who engaged in
legal politcal action.

“This is one understanding of a poliical class of prisoners--they
have not infringed upon the law; but racher the law has been
wielded against them in order to prevent their poliical activiy
“The reason politcal prisoners exist is because revolutionaries are a
threat o the law as it exises, and the law imprisons them out of it
own selfinterest. This understanding is most applicable prisoners
who e clearly innocent—Leonard Pelter, Mumia Abu Jamal; in
the United States,the ls s not long,

But while the image of innocence is appealing to those who love
the law, and although the air of innocence is routinely deployed
in campaigns to defend comrades who have committed crime,

this notion of innocence makes no stab at the law which decides

innocence and guile. The lw not only acts in its own defense, i

also ensures that revolutionaries commit crime. So revolutionaries

outine a theory of illegal morality—in order to change the law,
one must break the lav. Criminality then, is not an inherent
desire of the revolutionary, but a condition placed upon her by the
suae. Poliical prisoners are not only composed of the innocent,
butalso of people who broke the law for the “ight” reasons. They
are prisoners of war. Defined in this way, the list of prisoners of
war remains small--one hundred prisoners in the United States,
give or take. One half of one hundredth of one percent of the
incarcerated population.

‘The categorization of policical prisoners as revolutionaries who
have committed moral crimes does not appeal to those who love
the law, but it resonaes with individuals who take sides in a war
o change the law. The demand for the release of a prisoner of
war cannot be based on innocence, and so it is based on amnesty.
Amnesty is the process of releasing of prisoners who have been
taken hostage during 2 war between states, after the war has
ended. Itis remarkable how easily the practice of amnesty can be
trandlated to prisoners of a war within a sute, particularly when
the prisoners considered themselves a different nation or sought
through revolution to establish a new government. Although the
revolutionary war is @ civil war, it is ought between two staes--
one established, and the other in attempred uprising.

Politcal conflct is always fought between states that are cither
existent or revolutionary. A conflict in which the insurgents are
not a government-in-rising themselves—if we can imagine such
a conflictwould not be calld political conflict, bu social war:
Sacial war s the expanded form of class war; class no longer marks
the limies of social struggle,if e ever did.

Amnesty is an inherently defeatist position o take, one that is
contingent upon surrender. In order for prisoners of war to be
eleased, the war must be over,the prisoners no longer combatants,
and they must be releasd into a climate of socil peace, a peace
their comrades will maintain.

“The approaches of innocence and amnesty shouldrit draw a knee-
etk eriticism, but rather should be placed in the context of the
politics from which they are derived--a politcs that appeals o
those who love the law, and politis of war beaween different
forms of government. Without passing judgment on the former
approaches, let us say that they fic their posivions, and then
consider our own position. Specifically, we should look again at
the distncion beoween political conflict and social war.

Al Sharpton... You're... a lie more polisical, and that just means
youcve a ltele more wnhuuman, thar s humans. Hat” - ‘Lil Wayne

“Lil Wayne sid it best-—o be politcal is to be a ltdle unhuman.
“That is nothing o be particularly ashamed of, for it is a pervasive
condition in society. Capitalism makes us all unhuman, t be
man is to be a lile unhuman, t be a woman is to be a lidle
unhuman, 1o be white, o be a worker to be a homosexual. The
social order is constructed so that we each have our place, our
role, identities. These are political formations. Itis a political
formation that the anarchist exists s an identity and, thercfore, as
atiny segment of society.

Politcs i the discourse of power. Perspecives and tactics vary
widely, but it is the same discourse that contains them. The
political individual, then, is a person with a plan for socicty.

Plans and programmes may threaten the existing power form,
but they are not 2 serious threat to power itslf. In the event of
social upheaval, the politicos can be counted upon for a placform,
leadership, and ultimately the resoration or maintenance of state
and capital. When the exising politicians are unpopula, ifferent
ones are on hand, and ifthe social upheaval i adical enough, there
will be some radical politcians who become well-positioned for a
grasp at power as the vanguard or representative of the people.

From the perspecive of the social order--which is to say, not the
specific forms of power that come in and out of dominance, but
of power tself-the revolutionary politcian is a st line of defense,
a fail-safe in upheavals that would otherwise be most devastating.

Discourse. A bomb s placed at a building of the Federal Bureau
of Investigations, but its blast does not speak for itself, because
its engineers also crafied 2 message and sent it to the media
outlets, denouncing the evil of the agency and making demands.
As an action, one might say, nothing could be more radical
than a bombing; yet the action remains within the context of a
negotiation with power. Indeed, the political dialogue berween
parties that makes up the social order could hardly exist without
some fringe groups planting bombs, so close are negotiation and
violence 1o its heart. The fringe group docs not have access o
the political spectacle enough to. proliferate its messages that
way, and so it makes a spectacle of iself. It is unable to stand
within the halls where formal negotiation takes place and routine
violence is deployed, soit deploys spectacular violence s informal
negotiation. s demands may be wildly improbable and far too
radical for the placforms of government, and et it has “made its
voice heard.” The tactics we employ, from discussion to bombing,
are irrelevant compared to a quescion of what they aim towards.
the restructuring of power or itsdissolution?

On the one hand, there i the question of power and how it ought
0 be structured and mainained, and on the other there is the
question of whether it ought t be structured and maintined
atall. Political individuals engage in the former question-the
discourse of power and political seruggle. Everyone is involved
in the latter question--the discourse of biopower and social war.

Biopower s the interscction of power with our bodies, resuling
in their subjugacion, management, and control. Its discourse,
then, is not of the kind heard in the halls of Congress, but that
berween ourselves and police, politicians, activists, managers,
lawyers,judges. Also in the spaces beoween our bodies, our bodies
and machines, our bodies and the school, hospital, prison and
workplace

All prisoners are political.” - various

There exists a_thind definition of political prisoners. As the
movement for prison abolition has grown on the Left, there
has been a tendency to radically expand the bounds of who are
designated as politcal prisoners. And a radical new phrasing has
been inscribed in the pages of the Lefiist Bible: "All prisoners are
political.” Itis a kind gesture, but only because it is made by people
for whom the label ‘policical i a compliment. Perhaps we should
have first asked the prisoners if they wanted to be politcal. What,
and stop saying biteh? What word could be more degeading than
“political' o apply to people without their consen’

“This tendency seems to overlook that the original reason for
describing some prisoners as poliical was to lluminate our bonds
of affnity--to idenify prisoners of a war that we are fighting on
the same side of. There are Nazis behind those walls. Let them
fiee, certinly—the better to crack their skulls—but surely we can
express our desires without expressing solidaricy with our enemies.

Ay movement that does not suppors their policial internes .. s a
sham movemens” - Ojore N. Lutalo, anarchist and former prisoner

And now we come to the crux of it. The recognition that
prison is bad for ou friends, the disgust and anger we fel at the
incarceration of people we care about, is the grounding for any
desire to do away with prisons entirely. Underlying the various
clasifications of “politcal” prisoners s an urge thatis human and
the urge to support our imprisoned comrades, as well as
the recognition that they are often treated more harshly by the
state because of their position in war. We have no shit to sling
at solidariy, only ac the hordes who have wrung that word dry
of every drop of meaning it once had, and at the idea that dhis
practice is inherenly radical.

In fac, solidarity has nothing to do with what side one is on, and
everything o do with the understanding that one is on a side-
—that is, at war. For anyone who comes to life as in 2 state of
war, there is nothing more natural than to support their comrades
in prison. While some anarchists are regrecaably devoid of a
practice of solidarity with their imprisoned comrades, that serves
25 a reasonable indication of their postion toward war as well
as frendship. Either they witness no war, or they do not seem
themselves in it, or they do not sce prisoners as their comrades
So it goes.

“There are many prisoners of war, and their nations have thei backs
as 2 matter of course. From the POW/MIA flags one sces fiying
at veterans’ posts across this nation, to the revolutionary solidarity
with prisoners of the Irish Republican Army, to the Cuban Five
fieedom campaign, to the prison support newworks of the Nazis
and the mafia, everyone supports their family their nation, their
amy.

Some of us, however, are fighting a different kind of war. One in
which we are not fighting for a nation, an ideology, or political
power, but in a struggle 1o destroy all of those. A war that is
qualitatively distnee. The only war that could not only free our
own prisoners of war, but destroy the prisons.

In the war against all that, we do not perceive criminaliy as
the infringement of just law, nor as a necesary and just means
o revolution. Crime is anti-politcal desit, our engagement in
rediscovering our bodies and lving energy: Insurrection will never
be the political actvity of revolutionarics, for it is the criminal
activity of becoming human.

| |
There is no prison,
“Disneyland is there to conceal the fuct that i is the wal country,
all of ‘real America’, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there

1o conceal the fict that it i the social in is entirey. in its banal
ommipresence, which s caceral).” - Jean Baudvillrd

I it surprising that prisons resemble factoris, schools, barracks,
Dspitals, which all resembl prisons?” - Foucauls, Discipline and
Punish

Prison s nor a discrete places ts force and logic are distibuted
across the metropolis. Put another way, there is a place that is
prison, and then there is a tendency; 4 way of managing lfe,
that s prison. The place and the tendency are not two, but one.
Mactocosm, microcosm. To speak of prisons as if they were
separate from the rest of society is to equivocate. What we call
prisons are a node in the prison-metropolis that ae indic
how the mettopolis functions as a whol

ive of
h the
something that one
cannor escape from, but only shife positions within.

without wh

st could no function. Prison is 1 totali

Ones position in society corresponds to vasly different degrees
of freedom. There i the difference between being in prison or
being free. Differences in probation and parole staus, differences
in citizenship and doct

nentation, social

s, gender, race
Meanwhile inside theprison there are power relationships between
inmates, guards and other authoricies, there are hicrarchies of
every sort, and there is the “prison within the prison’solitary
confinement, the hole.

No matter where one is located in free society, with some rare
exceptions made for the powerful, one exists under the threat of
prison. Prison is a Judgment Day which, like the trumpet of the
archangel, could be sounded at any time, bu feels nearest during
acts of sin. We are controlled through the existence of prisons
because we are not in them. With the threat of incarceration
comes a sense of the precarity of one's recdom, which can invoke
the desire to carpe diem. And so the escaped conviet lives wildly
in frecdom while her risk of imprisonment is highest; and so the
prisoner with a lfe sentence fels he has nothing lef o lose. But
the majority occupy a space that is neicher the heaven of being on
the lam nor the hell of being condemned, but 2 pale grey limbo
in which the desire for somebody to do something is constantly
felt and constandly deferred. This i the total incarceration of the
population.

The mechanisms of prison creep across the metropolis. Through
architecture, psychology, and. technological force, prison has
perfected the control of movement, the management of time,
the neutralization of threats, the universalization of surveillance,
the separation of public and private space, the breaking up of lfe
into a seres of functions deemed essential-sleep, consumption
of food, physical exercise, work, religious practice. These have
become familar to fee’ individuals. We do not need to rely on
experts and rescarch, o we know prison all oo well,

After a recent prison riot,the experts published a study declaring
the prison food was the cause. We know that it is not food, but
hunger thar causes prison riors.

“There are other names for the pervasive condition of incarceration
Capitalism: a system of social relationships through which life
is reproduced into deadness, or non-life. On the physical level
it produces commaodicis from living beings and the carth;
cemporally, it urns lf inco labor (“Capital is dead labor” - Karl
Mary); on the level of reationship it creates the spectacle from
the “unity-of ife” (“The spectacle in its generaliy is a conerete
inversion of lfe and, as such, the autonomous movement of non-
life.” - Guy Debord). Politcs: the discourse of power that makes
us less than human. Poliics, prison, and capital: agents in the
production of deadness
[ ]
Prison cannot be
abolished, only destroyed.

“Burn, baly, burn' - ioses in Warkuwordh Canadi shouting as their
Jformer prison went up in flames

Without resorting to prophecy, it is argusble that the state could
abolish prisons in a way that would not only continue s existence
but restore ts health,

Let it not be said that what follows is 2 eritique of abolition as
reformist; the thrust is something altogether different. Here
is what can be said of the old dichotomy bevween reform and
revolution. In place of the claim that reform prevents revolutio

it would be more accurate o propose that there is normality

and then there are cracks that appear acros its surface. In each
insurrection we know o, the so-called revolutionaries did as
much to contain, police, squash, or seck to lead the insurrection
as any reformist. That is not to say that individuals who desire
insurrection cannot open spaces of insurrection, but that in the
process, we must confront revolutionaries’along with ‘reformists’

i said, “shit happens’s wel, reform happens. Let us be clear:
if the state offers the abolition of prisons, or the releas of a e
thousand prisoners, no one is going 1o lock himself back up in
his cell. To do so would be stupid. We'l ake what we can get
Shorter sentences, longer chains, food that almost resembles food.
Lovely. Only a fool would reject eforms.

But we would reject prisons. We do not intend to spend our
lives asking for things from the ones who took everything from
us. Itis not only against the interest of ou jaile

in theie pover to give us what we want, because we want our lives
back. We will get what we can take. Only a fool would accept
teformism.

“The social order changes things as it sees i Free a few thousand
prisoners to reduce the overcrowding that can lead to iots. Build
a new jal. The budget i tigh, though, and it is expensive to
maingain prisons. There will be a focus on rehabilitation and
restoration more than punishment; meanwhile, prisoners will be
transferted to privately-owned faciites, because the government
can pay a corporation less per head than they do to run their
own prisons, while the prison owners still urn a profit. Certain
substances will be decriminalized. The sentencing for ghetto
drugs will remain harsher than for their white suburban forms.
“These are games to them. “They are playing with ou lives, moving
us around lke pieces on a chess board. They carcfully consider
every move, not because they care, but because they want to win
the game.

One and a half centuries ago, slavery was abolished by the United
States government. This followed an enormous social suruggle
over abolition—wars were fought between pro-savery lements
and abolitionist elements. There were slave revolts and armed
uprisings. The government intervened. And the Thirteenth
Amendment ever-so-neatly includes a loophole allowing for the
enslavement of prisoners (‘except 2 a punishment for crime
whereof the party shll have been duly convicted”). Morcover, the
economic system of chattel slavery was replaced with indentured
servitude and - industral wage labor-which the Northern
capitalists were struggling to prolifeate. So today, we have slavery,
although slavery has been abolished. ‘The structures of society that
requited slaves have remained intact. And in one hundred years,
prisons may be abolished, but we will sill have prisons a long as

capitalism remains intac.

Soifwe learn a lesson from this, we should notstruggle for another
Emancipation Proclumation, for abolition granted by the state
Many abolitionists would deny that tha is what their struggle
aims for; others would openly admit it is—hey say, “T am not an
anarchist, but an abolitionisc” The repetition of old gestures is
exceuted with precision.

“Euen f prisons were transformed from human storerooms into husury
hotels, even if the prisoners o all prisons are satisfied with reduced
sentences” even if the everyday beatings of prisoners are replaced by
sy agreements and asimilated by correctional policies in accordance
with the rman rights model, even if the ‘white cll rurn pink."and
heroine gives way to methadone we will remain forever enemics of any
structure that denies us ur fredom.” - anonymous

‘The argument has been made chat prison cannot be abolished
without the abolition of the entire system of law, production,
control, and so forth. ~1f we define prison in its totality. the
argument scands not only as true but as a truism, since prison
includes all of those. Bue the abolition movement defines the
prison a i it was a blot on the perfect sociery 2 cancerous twmor
that could be cut away: We scem to come together on the common
urge to do away with prisons, but in acuuality the foundation is
being laid for a betrayal. IF o abolitionists prison is oply a place,
then prisons can indeed be abolished separately from the rest,like
davery,at least in name.

1 the abolition movement succeeds we may see a world without
prisons, in which we are yet locked up. Imprisonment will have
changed form, changed name; ke savery, we will say that it does
not exist anymore, but control must be established nevercheles.
How could this be managed? Social control would be deployed
through advancements in surveillance, policing and architccrure-
~essentially, the mechanisms of the prison diffused through all
sectors of the mettopolis—while the prison population would
be drastically reduced by decriminalizing certain crimes and
insitating alternative sentencing. People who had spent the last
en or twenty years behind bars would be released into the sereees,
only to find that the world ousside appears and fecls more like
prison than it used to. Eerily, George Orwell's 1984 describes a
Sociery without prisons-—that is o say, asociety exsting as # single
large prison.

And yer, even the subjugated populacion has its outirs. The
main’ character of Orwell's narrative is arrested, and instead of
imprisonment he faces a process of politicization. So it must be
with the ‘abolition of prison. As the general population comes
under greater control and decriminalization, overseen by nicer
police and friendlier government bodies that faciltate 2 restorative
justice process bevween parties, there will stll be a sector of
humanity who make war on society and refuse 1o participate
in systems of social control. When populations of sex workers,
people of color, and drug users are decriminalized, with assault
and property crimes managed through restorative justice, the
true criminals would come out in starker contrast-—the outlaws,
the rebels, the pirates. They must be deale with. So prison
be abolished in such a way that the roublemakers are sill
locked away in an institucion that isn' caled prison, or undergo
‘areatment’ and are reintegeated into sociery, while the et of us
live in a different kind of prison.

The “prison abolivion movement” chat is viewed as 2 radical
social movement today, is set 1o become the establishment of
tomortow 1o the extent that the Lefe is able mobilize its forces
more effectively than the Right and if such changes are in the
interest of mainuining or increasing production and social
control. ‘The project is already under way, from the house arrest
and ankle GPS monitor to the Breathalyzer in the automobile, to
the decriminalization of marijuana in some staes and that drug’s
establishment in legitimate markets, to the reductions in prison
populations under the stress of budget shordfalls and prison riors.
“The abolitionist argumen, “look how the prison population has
grown n the past thirty orforey years” has already become obsolete:
as states begin to cut back their prison populations to balance
their budgets. Ttis one thing to resist the growh of prisonss it s
another to desitetheir destruction even while they are shrinking,

Abolition is framed, ke all social movements, by quanticative
goals-capacity building, prisonseduction campaigns, and the
abolition of prison as achievable in so many years. Campaign
goals include decreased sentences, carly. elease programs,
decriminalization, alernative justice models. Steps in the right
direction. Small changes that reduce total prisonpopulations. The
logie i that we can numerically reduce prisons out of existence, or
on the fip side, that we can numerically build a movemen thatis
large and efficient enough to abolish them.

The same quantity-driven movement would chim that the
destruction of a prison by fire is not effecive. ‘The prisoners will
be ransferred, the dormitories rebuil, there will sl be prisons
Instead of creating concrete solidarity through outside revolt,
activiss would willingly use the prisoners’ riots as 2 means to an
end. “They say,sce, thisriot shows thatthe prisons are overcrowded

and we demand some inmates be released carly. Itis unforeunate
that such a thing had to happen, they reason, but it is worth
getting our message into the media, because that will get us closer
0 our goals, which we know are in the prisoners and society’s best

“They are right that there willsill be prisons. But for what reasons
do prisons persise s it because prisoners set fire to them, or
because insurrection is not sufficently generalized?

“The prisons are being destroyed, right now. Prisoners around the
world are taking every available opportunity to make holes and set
fires, to sabotage cameras and take guards hostage. OfFcourse there
is abso stllness, inerta, alling-into-line, but beneath the sound of
feet falling in ehythm are the odd sounds of the scratching of a
knife, the rning of pages, and the tinkering of wire against an
electrical socket; following that, the distnet sound of an electrical

spac s hard,and he scnt ofsomesin g s hough

Itis not enough--and whats more, it is not a joyful approach-—to
gradually empty the prisons of the prisoners through new social
programs and campaigns, lewing their shell stand hollow. The
silhouettes of empry prisons would stand as reminders of a grave
mistake, but we would never be fiee. Let us seck the feeling of a
prisoner taking a sledgchammer to her cell

There s a story that comes from the ocupation of the abandoned
Aleatraz prison isand by the Indians of All Trbes besween 1969 and
1971, We do not ko where this sory eame from or if it ‘eally
happened, only dhat it has taken root in our minds. According 10
the legend, one of the peaple inwlsed in the occupation had been
imprisned at Alealiaz. in bis carlier years. When he arrived
o the island, he searched hrough she prison for some sime and
cventually came o thecell in which heid been locked up. Taking up
sedgehammer, the man destoyed the wals ofte cll, block by cement
block. It was hard work, and he was many years in age, and by the
time he was done e was exhassted. He put down the sldgehammer
and sank to he ground. with the ruins of the old cage around him
“One and a half centuries ago, slav-
ery was abolished by the United
States government. This followed
an enormous social struggle over
abolition--wars were fought be-
tween pro-slavery elements and
abolitionist elements. There were
slave revolts and armed uprisings.
The government intervened. And
the Thirteenth Amendment ever-
so-neatly includes a loophole
allowing for the enslavement of
prisoners ("except as a punishment
for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted"). More-
over, the economic system of chat-
tel slavery was replaced with inden-
tured servitude and industrial wage
labor--which the Northern capital-
ists were struggling to proliferate.
So today, we have slavery, although
slavery has been abolished. The
structures of society that required
slaves have remained intact. And
in one hundred years, prisons may
be abolished, but we will still have
prisons as long as capitalism
remains intact.”

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