A World Without Prisons.

With over 2.3 million men and women in prison in the US, here's an interesting perspective from Julia Sudbury in the Guardian. 

We do not create safer communities by locking people in cages; that prisons do not solve the problems that lead to crime, like drug use, poverty, violence or mental illness.

We also draw attention to the massive cost of perpetual prison expansion, which siphons public resources away from services that could be used to build safer and more egalitarian communities. We take seriously the ways in which people harm others, and seek to transform the social and economic conditions that promote violence, as well as creating community-based strategies to address harm and create accountability.

We believe that the violence of crime cannot be solved through the additional violence of policing, surveillance and separation from loved ones. Instead, we advocate focusing attention and resources on building empowered communities, with decent housing, secure jobs, food security, healthy environments and high-quality education, as the ultimate alternative to incarceration.