Revolution or Reform? A Theoretical Analysis of the Prison Abolition Movement and State Engagement

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dc.contributor.advisorSmith II, Preston
dc.contributor.authorKeshet, Stav
dc.date.accessioned2022-06-28T12:57:24Z
dc.date.available2022-06-28T12:57:24Z
dc.date.gradyear2022en_US
dc.date.issued2022-06-28en
dc.description.abstractThe Prison Abolition Movement has an ambivalent relationship with the state and with what is commonly known as ‘electoral politics.’ They often see state institutions as inherently violent, leading the movement to promote a complete transformation of society. However, the state has a monopoly over all institutional processes and establishments, including those that allow for social change, making this goal particularly challenging. In addition, the state often has complete control over the lives of people abolitionists’ center in their organizing efforts, such as incarcerated individuals. Therefore, prison abolitionists must engage with the state, an act that can be seen as reinforcing the legitimacy of structures they mostly disapprove of. This thesis explores such tensions, developing a conceptual toolkit for the abolitionist perspective on the relationship between the state and society. This toolkit provides language for the ways in which abolitionists organize, mostly through state engagement, while minimizing the amount of legitimacy they provide it. In this thesis, I argue that prison abolitionists are able to reconceptualize how state engagement is defined by grounding their organizing in their values of community care; I call this value-based organizing. This conceptualization seeks to highlight the ways in which prison abolitionists’ ground their work in their shared values, and how such a foundation allows them to engage with the state while pushing back on its authority. I demonstrate how the identities of abolitionist organizers are often shaped by their values, providing them a guiding framework; such perspective allows activists to engage with the state while deprioritizing it, maintaining their agency and autonomy. By doing so, they shift existing power structures: even though they actively engage with the state, such activity does not center state power, but the people. This theoretical analysis was created from the lived experiences of seventeen abolitionist organizers from across the United States which I had the privilege of interviewing, combined with supplementary theoretical sources. By doing so, this research uses a version of grounded theory, a method of data analysis which seeks to build a theory from emerging data, asking interviewees open-ended questions, and grouping the responses into common themes. I present the data using composite narratives, which are stories woven together- created from quotes of multiple participants- allowing enhanced reader resonance and making my data accessible to a non-academic audience.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipPoliticsen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10166/6359
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.rights.restrictedpublicen_US
dc.subjectprison abolitionen_US
dc.subjectpolice abolitionen_US
dc.subjectabolitionen_US
dc.subjectcriminal justice reformen_US
dc.subjectprison industrial complexen_US
dc.subjectprison abolition movementen_US
dc.subjectsocial movementsen_US
dc.subjectcomposite narrativesen_US
dc.subjectgrounded theoryen_US
dc.titleRevolution or Reform? A Theoretical Analysis of the Prison Abolition Movement and State Engagementen_US
dc.typeThesis
mhc.degreeUndergraduateen_US
mhc.institutionMount Holyoke College

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