Should We Burn the Criminal Justice System?

The episode discusses the idea of reforming the criminal justice system versus abolishing it completely. The guest, Matt Conway, explains that abolition is not about getting rid of all prisons and legal statutes, but rather rethinking and changing how the criminal justice system operates. The conversation highlights how reformism may not be enough to address the systemic issues and power dynamics within the system. It also explores arguments against abolition, such as a lack of enforcement on crime and potential negative consequences in minority and impoverished communities. The debate ends with a discussion on the need for radical ideas to tackle the deep-rooted problems in the criminal justice system. Welcome to episode one of, Is This a Crazy Idea? Should we try to reform the criminal justice system? If you were to ask most Americans that question, they'd think you're crazy, uninformed, or racist. And why shouldn't they, right? It seems obvious. There's so many significant problems that come to mind, whether it be mass incarceration, racial surveillance, tactics, the list goes on. But there's a significant literature and evidence on an idea called abolition that says, Americans might be the crazy ones, reformism might be bad. And actually to explain this topic called abolition, we have Matt Conway to help us navigate both parts. So, Matt, how's it going? Good. Very glad to be here. Yeah. So before we start, I just want to introduce Matt a little bit. He goes to James Madison University. He's a sophomore and he's a captain of his debate team, which they do a lot of research on international and domestic issues, such as like arms sales, climate change, and particularly criminal justice reform. He did a lot of work in 2020 about that. And he has a lot of interesting arguments and authors that he thinks would be beneficial to the conversation. So I appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me. So when we talk about abolition, what are some general things that people should think of when it comes – like this is a radical idea, so what should they be thinking about? So if you want to think about it in a broad sense, it's a kind of a removal of the criminal justice system, but it's not necessarily a full totalizing, you know, we're going to take down all prisons, we're going to abolish all legal statutes about crime. It is more of how we think about the criminal justice system and what we allow to take place within it. And that is a starting point for them kind of breaking out of the total system. Yeah, like the system that like – there's clear power dynamics in the ways that like we label people in the way that like we create people as criminals and those are bad people. Once they leave, they can't – like they're entrenched in this idea of like criminality. Like there's pretty strong structures that have been put in place over the past couple centuries that are just like causing really bad problems. And now people are starting to realize it and they're trying to come up with solutions. So, yeah, that's really good. I appreciate you coming on and talking to us about this. Yeah. Okay, Matt. So, talking about like reformism and so people immediately consider like, well, reformism is a great thing, right? Criminal justice system needs a lot of reform. But we're going to kind of talk about why reformism may be lacking in certain areas, why it's like maybe even entrenching some of the problems with the criminal justice system right now. So, what have you kind of heard or maybe some examples of what's going on in the world right now that you may think that reformism just isn't working? So, I think one of the biggest things is how elected officials present reform to the criminal justice system. For instance, Rocco from the Human Rights Watch in October talked about the Biden administration's new policy and the new pardons on marijuana possession in federal courts. And the problem with this reform is they made it seem like a very large substantial reform when the problem is the federal drug possession cases are so few. It affects I think less than 7,000 people, around 6,500 as I think Rocco puts it. So, the framing of reform to the criminal justice system creates kind of this hollow hope in which we think that there is substantial reform and we are getting far in where we need to be to reform the criminal justice system when in actuality politicians are kind of hiding the true effects of the reform. Yeah. I actually have another author here, Corat Sanas, an American civil rights lawyer. He's talking about how just the way that we do reform movements are considered, he quotes, is superficial and deceptive. It says, reforms would leave the United States as the greatest incarcerator in the world. Because when we reform, we're only bringing light, one, we're giving credit to the people, like, hey, this is bad and you're just highlighting the negative impacts that are happening right now. So, it's doing that, but it's also not solving the issues. When young adults see this massive movement and then little comes of it and the system just keeps being perpetuated, people lose hope. So, you mentioned what hollow hope is. Can you describe a little bit what hollow hope is? Yeah. So, hollow hope is a sort of theory about when the government, state officials pass some sort of reform, the citizens have this hollow hope, a little bit of hope in terms of this reform will get us somewhere, when in actuality it doesn't. That is what creates the hollowness of that, because it's not actually a full reform that gets to where we want. It is these very small incremental ones that are framed as these big reforms that leave us to this hope of reformism, when in actuality we can never achieve that. Right. People might look at, they'll say, but wait, look at the civil rights movement. Look at these big things. Didn't that really make a drastic movement? It did in some ways, but also we still see power dynamics at play, right? We still see a lot of racially based things that are happening in the criminal justice system that aren't being fixed. Some basic ideas of like, we're employing new technology right now that's targeting black people, and it's really sad to see in these communities. This one researcher at New York University talks about how just trying to reform is only tinkering at the system's edges. We can't begin to fix the real issues without actually just getting rid of the whole thing, right? So, that's where this idea of abolition comes in. It's like we need to burn it to the ground. We need to figure out what's going on, just rethink about how we think of everything in general. So, yeah, that's great. Okay, so Matt, we just talked about why reformism just may not be enough or it's too simple, and instead we should just think about maybe abolition, right? Burn it to the ground, complete eradication of the government, kind of letting things run wild, changing radical ways of thinking. So, now we're going to kind of take the counter-argument. We're going to kind of talk about why abolition may not be good, why maybe that's just not ready yet or maybe it has unforeseen problems. So, what kind of interesting arguments have you heard about why abolition might not be good? So, I've heard the two more persuasive ones I've heard come from Ruffin and Mikulski, who are both associate professors of law. One is if you don't have a system and you don't have a criminal justice system, that means they're kind of, at least without an alternative, there's kind of a lack of enforcement on crime. And there is no prisons, there is no police officers, there's no policing that occurs, which means crime is practically legal at that point because there are no checks on that. And this isn't an insular event. This happens in multiple areas, but especially in minority and more impoverished areas who have increased crime rates already. Without those checks, that would increase. They also go on to say in other neighborhoods, in order to resolve that, people and people who have money and upper middle class would result in hiring their own security and private policing of neighborhoods, which also leads to its own significant impact. And, you know, obviously police stations have some sort of checks on who they get in. You know, there's police academies, there's background checks. If neighborhoods are just hiring their own private police and local police, there is really no telling on how that is enforced. And this can often result in more exclusion and minority violence against, you know, communities of color as there are no checks to see, you know, maybe there is a history of racial bias with the security guard, but they don't know that because there aren't those checks on security and policing. Right. Yeah. And that's what a lot of people are writing. For example, Liz Carrier and P. Shea Evidence, they're both professors at Carleton University. They kind of hint at the root problem that I think a lot of people have with this is it's just not clear enough. Right. Like they just don't know what making, like how you put it, you make crime legal. Like that just sounds too erratic right now. These are these authors kind of poke at that. They talk about how there's a lack of understanding that there's other issues in the world besides just the criminal justice system that create really bad things. For example, they talk about issues like capitalism, right, how it's disproportionately targeting communities of color in and of itself, like just racist ideologies that are still out there, like in like people getting employed and things causing disproportionate. Like how are we? How is that going to fix the problem? Right. Like it's like how is abolition going to solve these issues? And also you're like letting criminals run free, like some rapist who like just got 40 years, got really lucky at this time. It's like, oh, by the way, we're eradicating the entire penal system and like no more prisons. You're free to go. People have a big issue with that. But I think kind of what a lot of these authors are saying, we're going to debate about this is like, but we maybe need something this radical to solve these horrible things that are like these. We've talked about there's really big power structures at play here, big corporations with big money that employ a ton of people. So how do you like combat that? You need a radical idea. So what we're going to do now is we're going to kind of simulate what a really, really radical debate would look like arguing reformism versus abolition. It should be fun. And now a word from our sponsors. Are you too comfortable? Is your neck not red and itchy? If you answered yes to any of these questions, try dress gray. We promise your neck will be as red as a firetruck after 15 minutes of dress gray. We're money back guaranteed. Enjoy the rest of the podcast. OK, Matt, so now we're going to have a debate, an unrestricted debate on just abolition, complete eradication versus reformism. And I'll just you're going to be the side saying that reformism is good. I'll say abolition is good. We should burn it to the ground. So just to start, why should we continue a system that's inherently racist and causing all these negative impacts in the world that are arguably horrible? Yeah. Murderers shouldn't probably walk free. Yeah. Like you understand, like there's there isn't a clear understanding of what abolition is yet. But isn't that better than continuing violence and like racism? I mean, you just said burn it all down. I think that's a pretty fine example of what abolition would look like. And let's not advocate. Well, like abolition, we like a lot of writers are saying that like abolition can be like moderate, like you can like start at somewhere and then it can eventually get down to zero. Right. But like, isn't that better than like just trying to pick and pat it like your reformism is doing nothing, just entrenching the idea and giving less hope to individuals that we can actually change this. Not like horrible. No, because eventually when we get to that point of zero, then murderers do walk free. What there what is the alternative form of punishment if we're burning the criminal justice system down? Have you ever thought that maybe the reason that there's so much violence in this world is because we're labeling people as criminals? And like we have power dynamics that like black people are entrenched in communities and they're being disproportionately targeted. That's creating more violence and tension in the communities. Like shouldn't we get rid of that person that might be the root cause of the problem? Like that's what our alternative looks like is getting at the root cause of the issue. Your cause is you're doing nothing. I don't think any reformist is in favor of falsely imprisoning someone. I think they're in favor of imprisoning someone when there is evidence that they've committed a crime such as murder. Yes, of course, false imprisonment and racial bias in the criminal justice system is bad. But that does not mean we should burn down all the checks and balances for when we do have evidence of a crime. Right. And like I get what you're saying, but like, like, there's like the problem is it's so inherently like any crime or legal statute or any court decision. I can't get behind that because I know that you didn't support the court decision to send Jeffrey Dahmer to prison. Look, I didn't say that. I don't support that. You don't support any. Well, sure. But also, there are some good instances of reform. Look, abolition is an extreme argument. Like abolition. Yeah. Like I am saying that in the sense that Jeffrey Dahmer shouldn't have gone to prison. Sure. Why not? OK. It's better than a whole entire black community being put to prison. When the government gave women the right to vote, was that a good instance of reformism? Yes. Yeah. So there is good instances of reform. So we shouldn't burn it all down. Well, OK. Maybe we shouldn't burn it all down. But like, it's got to go in a sense that how are you going to eliminate power structures that are put in play? Let me ask you that. Can reform them in which there is more equality in the criminal justice system. Really? Give me one example of power structures. OK. But there is still racism in the criminal justice system. And people are disproportionately targeted. Racism occurs because people are biased, not because of the criminal justice system has punishment for murderers. Look, you are never going to be able to get rid of racist policing and like sentencing reform if you don't get rid of it and rethink how we can stop the hiring of racist individuals from private policing that has no checks and balances and background checks. Look, there is no, you can't just say that there is going to be private policing. What if people embrace this idea of like, maybe, like I saw something that like people might be able to go to mental hospitals and like rethink how they think their lives instead of just like putting them in prisons and mass incarceration. Yeah, sure. Because like Jeff Bezos is going to be like, oh, no criminal justice system. I don't need security. Right? Yeah. All right. Well, that's an example of what a heated debate would look like on this. It was really interesting. Matt, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. It was great. Yeah. All right.