by
David Gordon Scott
16th May 2025
There can be little doubt that we need a radical transformation of the way in which the state responds to ‘crime’. Rather than reducing harm or facilitating safer societies, the criminal law is actually more likely to generate new harms and hinder the reintegration of people into society. Those who advocate penal abolition, however, have a radical vision that could change all of this. Abolitionists suggest turning our response to law-breaking upside down. They propose that rather than punishing offenders, we should instead focus primarily on repairing the harm done, hearing the voices of victims and, where possible, rebuilding their world.
Criminal law as a harm-creating response
The ultimate sanction of the criminal law in the UK is a prison sentence. Rates of prisoner self-harm and self-inflicted deaths in England and Wales have reached record levels in recent years. Studies have also shown that prison sentences reduce life expectancy: a year spent in prison could reduce someone’s life by up to two years. Prisons also damage prison officers, who have a life-expectancy of only about 18 months post-retirement. Prisons slowly kill.
Prison also does little for people in the wider community. Rather than solve problems, prisons instead create new problems. There are over 300,000 children every year who are deprived of a parent because of a prison sentence. Communities are also harmed when people are taken out of society and are released in a worse situation than when they went in.
Rethinking harm and focusing on victims
So, if we are to transform our current harm-creating policies and practices, we need to change the way we think about and respond to social harms. Many of the most serious harms confronting people today are not part of the remit of the criminal law. Economic and social inequalities mean large numbers of people experience intolerable living conditions and poor health, which can result in their avoidable and premature death. Further, many of the most serious harms today are linked with the powerful corporations, organisations and states. Yet these social harms are not necessarily defined ‘criminal’.
If we incorporate those who suffer these different kinds of social harms into our definition of victimhood and shift our focus to addressing the needs of victims, then we may be getting somewhere. Certainly, sending more and more people to prison is not going to work (prison populations in England and Wales have increased by around 57 per cent in the last few decades). Prisons do nothing to address many of the deadliest harms we face and do very little, if anything, for victims of crime: they do not fix or replace what was broken, repair damage or rebuild devastated lives. What we desperately need is an approach that is sensitive to the suffering of others and can help make people’s lives better.
Victims (including those of social injustice and the harms of the powerful) often call for three things. First, they want once again to feel safe. Victims want to know they are not going to experience a repeat of the harm and that they can now move on with their lives. Ensuring the safety of victims should be the first priority of any ethical response. Focusing on the punishment of law-breakers damages people rather than helps them address their behaviour. Re-establishing feelings of safety and reducing insecurities are more likely to come through building trust, renewed confidence, stronger social bonds and caring relationships. Repairing damage is the pathway to feeling safe once again.
Being safe also means feeling protected, and a second thing victims want is to know that what happened to them won’t happen again, to them or to anyone else. The harm that befell them should be taken seriously and lessons learned for the future. A clear understanding of what went wrong and how the harm was perpetrated should be established. This means investigating and understanding the causes and consequences, and ensuring they are not repeated. This requires a commitment to truth and a willingness to address the underlying causes.
The third thing victims want is answers. Victims want to know why they were harmed. This implies answerability (where perpetrators give such answers) and accountability. Prisons are not very good at making people accountable or facilitating answers for victims. Hurt, damaged and stigmatised people are less likely to take accountability for what they have done or give honest explanations. Answers are much more likely via mediated dialogue, the transparent oversight of power and mechanisms of democratic accountability.
Abolitionist voices and visions
Penal abolitionist voices and visions demand that social harms are responded to in an ethical way. An ethical response will of course depend on what happened and why. There are different ways to ensure safety, harm reduction, redress and answerability depending on the circumstances. But as abolitionists we should always keep that most foundational moral principle in mind: to do unto others as we would have them do unto ourselves.
David Gordon Scott works at The Open University and is Co-Founding Editor of the journal Justice, Power and Resistance.
Abolitionist Voices, edited by David Gordon Scott, and Envisioning Abolition, edited by David Gordon Scott and Emma Bell, are available on Bristol University Press for £90.00, here and here.
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