Oleh: Cory Massimino. Teks aslinya berjudul “No Justice from the Prison State.” DIterjemahkan oleh Iman Amirullah dan Boggy MS. Departemen Pemasyarakatan Florida baru – baru ini memecat 32 sipir setelah bertahun-tahun dugaan korupsi dalam sistem penjara dan terkait dengan setidaknya empat kematian narapidana. Para pejabat Serikat Sipir menyebut pemecatan massal itu sebagai “pembantaian Jumat malam.”…

Escrito por Nathan Goodman. Artículo original: Prisons and Primitive Accumulation, publicado el 11 de abril de 2016. Traducción al español de Luis Vera. Un punto importante que mi colega Kevin Carson ha enfatizado en repetidas ocasiones es que las relaciones laborales prevalentes en nuestra sociedad no son simplemente el resultado de intercambios voluntarios en el…

After antifa clashed with right-wing protesters in Berkeley, Mayor Jesse Arreguin argued that California “should classify [Antifa] as a gang.” Later this month, juggalos – fans of the rap group Insane Clown Posse (ICP) – will protest their own federal gang classification in Washington, DC. Gang classification is commonly misunderstood. ICP themselves were originally amused…

One important point my colleague Kevin Carson has emphasized repeatedly is that the prevailing labor relations in our society are not just a natural outgrowth of voluntary exchanges in a free market. Instead, they have resulted from pervasive state intervention that constrains the options of workers, thus leaving them in a worse position to bargain…

Trattamento sanitario obbligatorio indica la capacità dello stato di ricoverare un malato di mente contro la sua volontà. Forse la legge più famosa al proposito è la Baker Act, approvata in Florida nel 1971, legge che autorizza il ricovero coatto di una persona che (a) potrebbe soffrire di disturbi mentali, e (b) potrebbe essere pericoloso…

Involuntary commitment is the ability of the State to institutionalize mentally ill people against their will. Perhaps the most well-known law providing for involuntary commitment is Florida’s “Baker Act” of 1971, which allows for the involuntary commitment of a person who (a) may possibly have a mental illness, and (b) may be harm to themselves,…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Cory Massimino‘s “No Justice from the Prison State” read by Christopher B. King and edited by Nick Ford. As prison system inspectors visited Franklin Correctional Institution they discovered an incident from three years prior in which an inmate, 27-year-old Randall Jordan-Aparo, begged officer Rollin Suttle Austin, to take him to the hospital because of…

It’s election day in the USA. The mass incarceration nation is deciding which political opportunists will rule. On the state and local level, citizens are casting their votes on ballot initiatives that will determine the structure, specifics, or application of state coercion. Some of these ballot initiatives probably deserve support from prison abolitionists, specifically initiatives…

It’s well known that the United States has the largest prison population on Earth. It’s less obvious why this is the case. To truly understand mass incarceration, we should examine what caused America’s prison population to grow so dramatically over the last several decades. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and…

Mandatory minimum sentences have been receiving a fair bit of scrutiny lately, largely due to the efforts of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM). And rightly so. Mandatory minimums remove discretion and context from sentencing, resulting in grossly unjust and wildly disproportionate sentences for minor offenses. Moreover, they’ve caused some troubling shifts in who has discretionary…

Di recente, il dipartimento penitenziario della Florida ha licenziato 32 secondini, misura presa dopo anni di presunte corruzioni all’interno del sistema carcerario, corruzioni alle quali è legata la morte di almeno quattro carcerati. I rappresentanti sindacali hanno definito il licenziamento di massa il “massacro del venerdì sera”. Un massacro che io approvo. Scavando tra i…

Do we want cops and politicians to go to prison? Is that a demand that individualist anarchists, radical libertarians, and other enemies of the state should get behind? Intuitively, it seems like we should. We’re instinctively outraged that cops can outright murder people and almost never get locked up for it. We’re understandably incensed that politicians…

Florida’s Department of Corrections recently fired 32 guards after years of alleged corruption in the prison system with at least four related inmate deaths. Union officials call the mass layoff a “Friday night massacre.” Now that’s one massacre I can get behind. Reporters digging deeper into the prison records found multiple incidents of abuse and so-called…

A new report from the Open Society Justice Initiative documents the overuse of pretrial detention around the globe. The report estimates that around 3.3 million people are currently incarcerated awaiting trial. These people have yet to be convicted of any crime, yet they are locked in cages and subjected to brutal human rights abuses. Martin Schoenteich…

For this week’s Weekly Abolitionist post, I’d like to emphasize the importance of holding a specifically abolitionist stance on prisons. Getting rid of prisons is not just one more reform to tack on after we’ve accomplished everything else. It’s the primary goal, and all other reforms should be judged with that in mind. The key…

An excellent article published last week by Radley Balko in The Washington Post explores the racially discriminatory consequences of gun control laws in the United States, as illustrated through the lens of several recent news stories. Balko begins by discussing the arrest of Shaneen Allen: Last October, Shaneen Allen, 27, was pulled over in Atlantic…

Since Nathan Goodman has asked me to fill in for him this week on The Weekly Abolitionist, I’d like to focus on something important to radical political struggles that isn’t talked about much: fiction. As prison abolitionists, we can talk at length about the ways that prisons as such encourage abuse, add to recidivism, interlock…

On July 7th, Molly Knefel published a great piece on jury nullification in The Nation. Knefel opens by discussing the trial of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street protester who was convicted of “assaulting” a police officer who had assaulted her, and sentenced to a prison term that most of the jurors who convicted her…

In recent weeks, I’ve seen multiple stories about deaths in prisons. These deaths were all preventable and easily attributable to prison conditions. Let’s examine a few of these incidents. According to the Miami Herald, “Florida’s Department of Corrections is facing a third potential criminal probe in the wake of another inmate death at a state…

This week marks the 2014 National Week of Action Against Incarcerating Youth. Across the country, actions will be held to protest everything from the criminalization of queer and disabled youth to the isolation of youth in solitary confinement. Ultimately, what activists are protesting is systematic child abuse by the state. Kids are being locked in…