>> Also, as Christian asked earlier today: "What does 'prison
> abolition' actually mean?
>
> Well, it mostly means ending the insane, wasteful and ghastly
> War on Drugs. Decriminalize possession, treat addiction as the
> medical problem it indeed is.
There's more to it than that, however. In some sense, prison is the end result; it's the symptom, not the disease. That so many people wind up in prison in the US is not specifically a problem of prisons -- getting rid of them will not cure the problem any more than prohibiting the sale of band-aids will cure the scrapes and bruises of a 9 yr old boy -- or Reagan's closing of the hospitals "cured" mental health problems.
In addition to "housing" the insane and addicted, it also houses the 'ordinary' sociopath: US culture gives rise to the notion that, as long as no one is specifically looking, anything is permissable, including lawlessness. That some sector of the population gets (often repeatedly) caught in the act gives rise to the prisons in the first place. I don't see how you get around that by closing the prisons. We've talked about/around this before, and the fact is that although there are large numbers of people in US prisons who, in a different parallel world, "shouldn't" be there ... there are quite a number of people who are there for the pre-PIC reasons: violent crime and property crime. They are not in the minority.
So maybe "abolish prisons" really could mean "fewer prisons, realistic rehabilitation, etc." -- but this is not, from my reading of Angela Davis, the point of this meme.
/jordan