Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses structural racism and racist violence, including police shootings, as well as sexual violence.

At the heart of Kaba’s argument is the idea that those who have done wrong need to face accountability, reckoning with the harm they have caused, rather than be subject to punishment. Kaba describes how critics of prison abolitionism frequently argue that whatever their flaws, prisons are necessary for protecting society against violent criminals, asking gotcha questions such as “what about the rapists?” (134). Absent an equally clear alternative, it may seem as though the only alternatives are “prison or nothing” (137), rendering prison the obviously preferable alternative.

In the text, Kaba turns this argument on its head, showing that precisely because prison is the prevailing model, there is an abundance of evidence proving its ineffectiveness at deterring crime or encouraging offenders to accept genuine responsibility for their actions. By punishing them, prisons are simply “inflicting cruelty and suffering on people” (146), depriving them of their humanity and with it the moral faculties needed for genuine accountability. Inflicting such cruelty is part of the common human desire to inflict hurt in response to hurt, but this simply perpetuates a cycle that is likely to lead the offender to inflict further hurt in response to what they have suffered.