Throwing the Epstein Class Behind Bars is Compatible with Prison Abolition
As a prison abolition the Epstein Files presented a challenge for me, at first. But upon deeper reflection the answer to the question of how society should deal with evil pedophile, cannibal, billionaires is obvious and entirely consistent with prison abolition.
First to define prison abolition, which on its face the term seems pretty self explanatory but it's actually a very complex and obviously very contested set of ideas. The driving force is obviously to build a society without prisons and jails and the carceral mindset that enables them. That mindset has spread to the medical system and created a prison like system of involuntary commitments and poorly run state hospitals around the country. It has also infected the immigration system which is primarily a mechanism to detain immigrants, brutalize them, and sometimes, eventually, send them back to their home countries.
These systems are obviously carceral but the same mindset that tells us that jails, prisons, and detaining people against their will can solve our problems infects almost every institution and relationship in society. Take nursing homes for example. In an attempt to recreate kinship networks that traditionally cared for the elderly people in our society, we have created a system that is often essentially just institutionalized neglect, fueled by understaffed and underpaid cared workers and an over reliance on medication that may or may not be needed. All the while taking those in that system's freedom and leaving them relegated to the whims of whatever facility their family can afford (often without help from state insurance, blowing through people's retirement and inheritance). Those understaffed and underpaid care workers often lose sight of the humanity of the people living in these facilities, not out of malice, but simply because structurally it is impossible to keep it in mind under the pressures exerted by the profit driven retirement home.
Everything has become a prison. The panopticon follows us all through the surveillance state. And the precarity of incarceration and homelessness is always lurking right around the corner, ever present in the minds of working people. With this in mind dismantling this system for something more humane is of the utmost importance and should be on the mind of everyone with a conscience.
However, when advocating for prison abolition people are often met with various edge cases and the question of what to do with murderers, rapists, and generally awful people who willingly hurt others. The common refrain in response is usually something along the lines of pointing to the re-imagined society and how deeper working class institutions that actually help people flourish would prevent most crime. Perhaps a focus on restorative or community minded justice in cases where people really are just willingly doing heinous things. But with an understanding that we live in a heinous system that drives many people to that point. Especially when considering the vast majority of crimes that make up the million plus people who are incarcerated in the United States at any given time.
The Epstein Files in particular raise these questions loud and clear. There was seemingly no crime too heinous for those listed in the hundreds of thousands of documents the public has been parsing through for the last few months. So would prison abolitionists let these people go free? A slap on the wrist? Argue that it was just a bad system and they aren't bad people? I won't claim to speak for every abolitionist but I certainly won't make that argument and I think each of Epstein's co-conspirators dying in prison is perhaps paradoxically perfectly in line with the broader goals of abolition.
As described above abolition requires a systemic understanding and an appreciation for how those systems shape people's lives. Those systems limit the choices and in a very real way the free will of many people caught up in them. That is not to absolve people of responsibility for their actions but instead apply at least part of that responsibility to the conditions which led them to the point just prior to whatever decision was made to entrap them in the criminal legal system. Epstein's co-conspirators pretty clearly operated at a level of power that bent the system to their will. It simply did not constrain them and in fact was seemingly built and continually manipulated in such a way that it allowed them to make a big boys club out of committing the most vile acts imaginable. All the while raking in billions of dollars and cashing out God like influence over us lowly peasants.
The system that abolitionists seek to destroy and restructure is a system deliberately designed and maintained to benefit the Epstein class. It was never intended to punish the wealthy or powerful, it was created by them to maintain their wealth and power. The carceral state is designed to sweep social problems under the rug and hide them behind walls and bars out of sight from those the fear of being disappeared has largely unknowingly beaten into submission. This fear does not apply to the billionaires who sit atop that system.
There might be ways to restructure that power and allow for a more equitable system without throwing billionaires behind bars and throwing away the key. However, to do so does not mean abolition is further away than a system like that which exists currently. Prisons are made by these people for poor people in order to maintain their power. Prisons aren't made to punish the powerful. It is that simple. Throwing billionaires and war criminals behind bars might not be a permanent solution, or the best one, but it isn't inconsistent with prison abolition.
