[Skip this if you dislike complexity and are prone to knee-jerk reactions]

Some of these black men are going to prison. There is no question about it. These men will be locked up in cages for a very long time and I will be confronted again with the question of how it is possible to be a prison abolitionist in the face of such horrors.

I have waited a while before writing about this tragedy. However I have been following the terrible case of the 11 year old girl from Cleveland, Texas who was allegedly gang raped by 18 men ranging in age from 14 to 27. I want to put my hands in front of my eyes, I want to plug my ears with my fingers, I want to bury my head in the sand. There are no words to fully convey the horror of what was allegedly done to this young woman; to this little girl really. No adequate words except perhaps I am so sorry.

I want to focus on the community’s reaction to this brutal assault in order to say something about why it is so difficult to address the issues of community accountability and transformative justice in the face of such events. Akiba Solomon did a terrific job of summarizing the community’s response in an article a few weeks ago:

Cleveland has a population of 7,675 people. It’s 46 percent white, 28 percent Hispanic and 24 percent black. Now, if the media coverage truly reflects conventional wisdom among its 1,819 black folks, many in it don’t see what happened to this girl as an alleged gang rape but a case of consensual group sex gone wrong.

Relatives of the accused and a double agent ridiculously incompetent defense attorney James D. Evans III have focused on her ‘much older’ appearance, her ‘attention-seeking,’ rumors of a previous sexual history in the Quarters, her alleged aspirations of porn stardom, a Facebook page where the child reportedly bragged about sex, alcohol and drugs, and her mother’s neglect (not the father’s; never the father’s). In an interview on the local news, Anita Ellis Hancock, the mother of a 19-year-old suspect, exemplified this attitude. If you can’t watch the video, an alarming excerpt:

FOX 26: What did you do? Did you talk to your son?

Hancock: Yes I did. Yes I did. I said, ‘Baby, I’m your momma. You can talk to me.’ (The victim) said she was 17 years old and that’s what he told me.

FOX 26: But Anita, a lot of people would say, ‘This is an 11 year old child. Even if she lied, she’s eleven.’

Hancock: I understand that. I understand that. I’m not defending him. I’m not defending her. I’m not defending no child because if it were my child, I would feel the same way. My point is, where was her mother?

FOX 26: If this was reversed. If your son wasn’t your son, but you were the mother of this 11 year old, what would you do? What would you say? What is justice?

Hancock: First of all, I would know where she was. That’s the justice. Not knowing where your baby is is not justice. I feel like she should be accounted for not knowing where your baby at.

FOX 26: What lesson does you son need to learn?

Hancock: ID. Identification. This (holding up nametag and picture) is what you ask for baby.

FOX 26: So you’re going to tell your son, next time he meets a girl to ask for her ID?

Hancock: Identification.

When I read Ms. Hancock’s words, I could feel the anger rising up in my body. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to tell her that it is not OK to try to protect your own son by shifting the blame from his vile actions to others (especially to the victim and her family). I was disgusted and I could not find any compassion for Ms. Hancock. Here’s what I wanted to hear her say:

“I believe that my son was not involved in such a heinous act. I want to believe that. I don’t know him to be able to engage in such terrible behavior. But first and foremost, I want to extend my deepest regrets to the young woman who was allegedly harmed. I want to tell her family that I am praying for them. I am a mother. I don’t even know how I would react to this if it had happened to my daughter. I hope that everyone will reserve judgment on my son until all of the facts are in.”

That would have been enough. It is understandable that she would not want to believe that her son could be capable of such an act. But her willingness to blame the young woman for her own assault is unacceptable and immoral.

So we are left with many questions and concerns. But the overriding one seems to be: “If not, prison, then how do we hold perpetrators accountable for causing this type of massive harm?” Secondary questions include “how can we practice community accountability for violence when our “communities” are so often overrun with victim-blaming and often crippled by oppression?” and “Is it even possible to rely on a restorative justice model in instances like this?” I will try to offer my best thinking about all of these questions.

My friend Andy Smith, who is a co-founder of Incite! Women of Color against Violence and of Critical Resistance as well as one of the most brilliant people I know, argues that there are real limitations to restorative justice models for addressing violence. She writes:

“The problem with these models is that they only work when the community unites in holding perpetrators accountable. However, in cases of sexual and domestic violence, the community often sides with the perpetrator rather than the victim (Smith 2010, p. 259).

Andy’s words resonate with Ms. Hancock’s response to learning that her son had been accused of raping a young girl. Her response as well as that of the community-at-large was to rally around the young men who were accused of the crime. So where then does that leave those of us who eschew using prisons to punish such violence? Andy captures our dilemma:

“On the one hand, the incarceration approach for addressing sexual/domestic violence promotes the repression of communities of color without really providing safety for survivors. One the other hand, RJ models often promote community silence and denial around issues of sexual/violence without concern for the safety of survivors of gender violence, under the rhetoric of community restoration (Smith 2010, p.260).”

So there it is in a nutshell: prisons don’t keep victims of violence safe but one of the main alternatives to prison being advanced to address such violence also has its limitations. One might be tempted to throw one’s hands in the air and say, you know what, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. In other words, we remain stuck with the ineffective prison system as the remedy when sexual violence is perpetrated. This is not viable in my opinion. Andy agrees and suggests that “our challenge is to develop community-based models of accountability in which the community will actually hold the perpetrator accountable (p.260).”

And so for those of us who want to abolish prisons, our project MUST be to develop such community-based models of accountability. We must test them in real-time and in real-life. We must do this not because we want to “prove” that these models “work.” Instead, our charge is to develop such models because we actually do care about addressing harm caused to real people by violence and crime. I came to my anti-prison activism through my anti-violence work. I am passionate about supporting survivors of violence. I count myself among those survivors so I have a personal stake in these issues.

I started learning and reading about the concept of “restorative justice” in the mid-90s. However, I had already begun to understand what it meant earlier in my life. I was initially attracted to the concept of RJ because I was interested in finding a way that would allow for addressing violence without relying on the criminal legal system. Over the years, I have understood both the limits and the promise of RJ. Restorative justice interventions only work when we can get everyone involved in the situation to agree that a harm was done and that this was wrong. In these instances, RJ is a powerful option. I think that using restorative justice practices (with a keen awareness of their limitations) is worthwhile and I advocate this in my own work.

Yet about 10 years ago, it became clear to me that RJ would not be the vehicle through which we might eradicate violence. The main reason was that the RJ movement became content to be co-opted by the criminal legal system. Around 2002, I started learning more about the work of Incite!; its emphasis on the role of the state as a purveyor and perpetrator of violence provided an explanatory framework for what I felt was lacking in RJ. It turns out that what I wanted was not restorative justice but rather TRANSFORMATIVE justice. TJ suggests that while we are all subjected to interpersonal violence, people of color and other marginalized people are also the victims of state violence. For example, the criminal legal system itself causes harm to people. Institutional violence can have as much of an impact on our lives as interpersonal violence does. Incite! also offered the idea that we who want transformative justice to take root must guard against romanticizing the notion of “community”. Cleveland Texas is a case study of why this is important.

So what I am after is something more transformative rather than restorative. Developing community-based models of accountability provide a strategy for achieving truly transformative justice. Restorative practices have a role to play within community-based models of accountability to be sure. However, we must also steep these models in an anti-oppression framework. The models will also only emerge out of political and community organizing. Ultimately, this is how I believe that we will eradicate violence. It is the only way. It is our best hope for truly ensuring that we can be safe in our communities. Prisons won’t do it. They haven’t so far and won’t in the future. This is because as arms of the state, prisons, themselves are purveyors and perpetrators of violence.

In conclusion, let me return to the beginning, to the question about how I can be an abolitionist in the face of cases like Cleveland Texas. It is simple. I will once again lean on Andy, who perfectly expresses what is also true for me:

“[A]n abolitionist perspective is a positive rather than a negative project. That is, rather than argue that all prisons should be dismantled tomorrow, our task is to crowd out prisons with other forms of justice-making that will eventually demonstrate both the ineffectiveness and the brutality of prisons (p.267).”

Last summer, a volunteer in my organization curated an art show titled “Art against Incarceration.” Special thanks to our friends and supporters who contributed to this show. Enjoy the slide show of some of the art from the show:

I am not going to offer any additional comments on this but I came across a blog post by someone named Liam Denning at the Wall Street Journal today. Denning was discussing the private prison industry and how investors should trade the stocks of these entities (Geo Group and CCA). You can read the full post here.

The most striking parts of the post are quoted below:

By 2020, the U.S. adult population should increase by roughly 22 million, according to the World Bank. At the current incarceration rate, there will be another 160,000 federal and state prisoners by 2020. Say average overcrowding is cut from 109% to 105%—by building more beds—and the private operators win 35% share of all new beds, in line with the average for 2005-09. The result would be 76,000 new private beds across the decade, or a healthy growth rate of 4.5% a year. Privatization of existing public facilities would add to this.

There is a chance America’s appetite for imprisonment weakens, but this would require a major shift in attitudes. More importantly, as long as taxpayers are looking for ways to cut costs while still keeping their neighborhoods safe, the private prison operators should be able to lock in long-term growth.

This is what we are up against…