by Alex Theisen
Postcard Debrief
By: Alex Theisen
Are prisons necessary, or is abolition the way forward? While this is a debate that has been around for decades, there is no agreement on the answer.
When people hear the term abolition, all they may picture is murders roaming the streets. They are missing out on what the core of abolition is about: getting to the root of this violence. The way one would teach aspects of or advocate for abolition depends on the intended audience. Not everyone will be receptive to the idea, and the methods used are sure to have an impact on the outcome. In general, words are very powerful, and a single one can change everything. The word abolition has a lot of contention, and people have immediate opinions when they hear it. Therefore, some people may not take the time to learn about what abolishing prisons would actually mean before they reject it. There is a lot of support for reform in the criminal justice system; one poll found that 91% of Americans support reform of some sort (Clarke, 2018). While abolition and prison are different, I fully believe that if people understand the components and goals, there would be more support for the former.
For my project, I decided to create mock postcards exploring aspects of abolition for different groups of people. The idea is that they represent informational postcards that pro-abolition groups would send out. As they are supposed to be postcards, accompanying the writing are drawings I did illustrating ideas of prison and abolition. They are images that are supposed to catch people’s eyes to encourage them to read the writing on the other side and also get them thinking about prisons. To make them accurate to real life, I tried to remain succinct and keep to around 200 words. With these postcards, the hope would be that they would get the audience thinking and inspire them to seek out more information on the topic.
I made sure to say that is clearly not the intention of abolition and to focus on the community aspect. With this, the image shows the coldness of prison in comparison to transformative justice and community potential. When writing to advocates of reform, I made sure to point out the overlap abolitionists and reformists have as the groups use similar tools. As I said, I think if more people understood the fill scope, they could easily shift from reformist to abolitionist ideas. I continued by disagreeing over the merit of a prison system existing, which is where the two groups differ. I wanted to point out to reformists that their goal alone would not make society safer, and abolition could align with their ideal society. I kept the image simply, wanting to portray breaking out of the mindset of the necessity of prisons and growing the community.
Lastly, when presenting to a political representative, I thought it would be effective to present abolition as something that would benefit them and their community. By showing it is something voters want, it will keep the representative safe in their position while making the people they serve safer in society. While the idea of abolition should be supported on its own, I also considered how these representatives need a platform and mentioned how people would vote for these changes and thus the representatives that support them. The image I drew involved destroying prisons and introducing some of the components that would be used to rebuild society.
These few hundred words are not enough to change anyone’s mind completely, but I believe they would accomplish their job of starting conversations and encouraging these groups to seek out more information on the topic. As alluded to earlier, postcards like these could be made to target more specific groups rather than the more general ones I chose. If real postcards were made for this purpose, they could have QR codes that direct them to more information. This is an opportunity to give people some background and thought-provoking information that inspires people to find out more about prison abolition.
This idea is an appropriate format for this project because I believe it is realistic to real problems and real solutions. That is to say that it is a real problem that people do not understand the full concept of abolition. As well, sending out postcards targeted at specific audiences to drum up support is a real solution someone could take. Of course, this is not a complete solution, but it could be beneficial. With this idea, the audiences I chose were also not fully comprehensive of all that could be done, but I believe they are a good introduction to the concept. I chose the audiences of kids, government representatives, people that are pro-prison, and people that favor reform.
When writing to kids, you must be careful with your language. While I did not reflect this aspect in my writing, it is important to note that a great number of children are directly impacted by prisons. Besides those themselves who get involved in the system at a young age, there are those whose parents or family are. In the US, around half of the imprisoned people have a minor child resulting in almost 3 million children at any given time having an incarcerated parent (Ghandnoosh et al., 2021). Further, this impact is differential due to race. 20% of Native American children experience parental incarceration in comparison to 6% of white children (Ghandnoosh et al., 2021). Therefore, some kids may be more knowledgeable about the topic or already have strong opinions. The postcard was more general rather than a more specific group of children, so this project could be expanded to target more specific groups. I kept the writing simple and mentioned having support from family community rather than punishment. For the image, I used bright colors and I thought kids would be interested with the nature aspect.
For people that are pro-prison, I first hooked their attention by not using the term abolition because that can close people off from conversation. As well, one of, if not the biggest, concern for this group is that abolition just means getting rid of prisons and therefore just letting criminals roam the streets.
References
Clarke, M. (2018, November 6). Polls Show People Favor Rehabilitation Over Incarceration.
Prison Legal News. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/nov/6/polls-show-people-favor-rehabilitation-over-incarceration/
Critical Resistance. (2020). The Abolitionist Toolkit. 48-57.
CR’s Abolitionist Toolkit
Ghandnoosh, N., Stammen, E., & Muhitch, K. (February 2021). Parents in Prison. The
Sentencing Project. https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp- content/uploads/2021/11/Parents-in-Prison.pdf
Links for the stamp pictures
Frststamp. (n.d.) IRELAND – 1985 – THOMAS ASHE – 100th ANNIVERSARY [photograph].
HipStamp. https://www.hipstamp.com/listing/ireland-1985-thomas-ashe-100th-anniversary-/31617231
jps55liquefy. (2021). Stamp from Uruguay Angela Davis [photograph]. Stampboards.
https://stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=90781
kamalmedicine. (2022). Guinea Bissau 2009 MNH, Steve Biko, Anti-apartheid activist of South
Africa [photograph]. eBay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/294883508250
Royal mail. (2018). Suffragette Prisoner’s Pageant, 1911 [photograph].
CollectGBStamps. https://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=22781