REVISITED: Abolishing Prisons with Mariame Kaba

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

MS NOW, Chris Hayes

Msnbc, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Government, Politics, Chris Hayes, Why Is This Happening?, Withpod, Versant, Ms Now, News, Society & Culture, Versant Media

4.6 • 9.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2020

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you want to understand the conversation around abolishing the police, you should start here. We can’t think of a better time for an encore presentation of this 2019 episode with Mariame Kaba on how to radically rethink our approach to public safety and what it would look like if we got rid of the criminal justice system as we know it. What if we just got rid of prisons? The United States is the epicenter of mass incarceration – but exactly what is it we hope to get out of putting people in prisons? And whatever your answer is to that – is it working? It’s worthwhile to stop and interrogate our intentions about incarceration and whether it enacts justice or instead satisfies some urge to punish. Prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba wants us to explore some truly radical notions that force us to inspect those instincts towards punishment. Hear her dismantle what she calls the current "criminal punishment system" and instead employ the ideology of restorative justice. RELATED LINKS The Color Complex by Kathy Russel, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall Locking Up Our Own by James Forman Jr Circles and Ciphers Project NIA

Transcript

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0:00.0	The craziest thing is that I think sometimes white people, particularly in these situations,
0:04.6	they've got this crazy mix in their head of racialized suspicion and then white liberal
0:09.4	guilt where they don't want to say a thing because then it's like, oh, I'm a suspicious
0:14.2	white person, or racist, but then they call the cops.
0:17.6	And by calling the cops, you've thrown a grenade, you've thrown a grenade and you didn't
0:22.1	need to.
0:24.1	Hello, and welcome to Wise Is Happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.
0:34.8	I'm in a different closet right now.
0:36.2	I'm actually not in the closet.
0:37.5	I am sitting on the floor with a sheet over my head to try to make it not sound so roomy.
0:42.4	I don't know if that's working or not.
0:44.3	We have a special on-quare presentation today on Wise Is Happening.
0:48.9	And it's an episode of ours.
0:50.8	It's been getting a lot of attention recently because of the national conversation.
0:54.8	One of the things I think that you have seen taken shape is that in the broad center
0:59.7	left coalition of thinkers, writers, politicians, activists, there has been a kind of argument
1:05.3	conflict between people who are saying, let's reform the police through a bunch of different
1:10.2	means and people who are calling to defund the police, which can mean reducing police budgets,
1:15.5	cutting the number of police officers, or abolish.
1:18.5	That is not a new position.
1:21.5	There are people who have been advocating that for decades.
1:24.3	But it is interesting to see amidst the current debate and the sort of remarkable changes in public
	...

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