I've never been to prison but when I read this article I feel despondent. Here are people asking for some really tiny, minor things. The whole argument is predicated on the idea that prison is about rehabilitation. It's not. Prison is about destroying people. Punishing them for having the audacity to exist after revealing the fact that their identity does not fit the dominant narrative.
I am fundamentally opposed to prison in all but the most extreme cases. I also happen to believe a bunch of other things that would also see me branded as a radical by society, but I digress. Prison is fundamentally destructive as an institution. It is slavery by another name and it must be dismantled, though I don't know how we begin the process.
Its political, and at least in the US, it traces its roots back to corruption and how unrepresentative the US government is of its citizens.
If you want to fix almost all societal problems, you first need a system of government that fears and respects its people. I don't care which permutation of state you pick, but if you want a government to care what you say, it has to care about its people.
Most countries have that problem. Its less overbearing because most European states have better implementations of near the same parliamentary system, but even those governments are often too centralized and too easily corrupted, and that breeds an unrepresentative state.
Making a government that acts in the will of its people is absolutely step one to fixing the problems it causes. Then you just need to persuade the people and thus the representatives to change it.
There is no reason to believe that harsh prison systems are representative of the will of the people. In the 1990s, three strikes laws in California were enacted by public referendum. The margin was 3-1. 75% of people voted to put people in prison for life for three felonies--and they didn't even have to be violent felonies. And it was one of the most liberal states in the country!
It should be noted that the CA three strikes law was also weakened to only encompass "serious" or violent felonies in 2012 - also by public referendum.
I am fundamentally opposed to prison in all but the most extreme cases. I also happen to believe a bunch of other things that would also see me branded as a radical by society, but I digress. Prison is fundamentally destructive as an institution. It is slavery by another name and it must be dismantled, though I don't know how we begin the process.