At a moment when the Irish Government is investing millions of euros into prison expansion, we must critically analyse why expanding prison capacity is not a legitimate solution and appropriate use of public funds.

I found myself compelled to write this piece after recent requests for the Irish Penal Abolitionist Network (IPAN) to comment on the highly publicised case of a middle-class family facing state oppression and imprisonment. IPAN believe that imprisonment should not be used as a state response or solution to social issues. This is based on the mountain of evidence clearly showing that instead of decreasing crime within society, prison drives future offending, including exacerbating violent and addictive tendencies as well as serving as a vehicle of state violence against some of the most vulnerable people in society. Personally, I was of the belief that these requests for comment were classist, reinforced common assumptions as to who prison is for, and therefore served to legitimise state oppression over the poor and working-class.

Collective punishment occurs when an entire group is penalised for the actions of one individual or a small number of people. The experiences of collective punishment discussed here come from my eight years attending grammar school (gymnasium) in Slovakia. The school was not particularly religious or ideologically distinctive; rather, it reflected what I experienced as a fairly typical Slovak secondary school environment.

In my experience, penal abolitionists are interested in punishment for two main reasons. Firstly, on a human level, they are deeply concerned about the people who have to bear the weight of State domination and coercive confinement. People who have already received disproportionately less of society’s shared goods. Secondly, on a broader canvas, punishment reveals an incredible amount about the society we live in. Who we choose to punish? How we punish? The reasons we create for why we punish. I don’t think any other concept gets to the heart of the values we hold collectively.

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A common misunderstanding about ‘penal abolition’ is that the abolitionist project is mainly interested in dismantling existing systems of punishment, getting rid of prisons, and, beyond that, simply tearing down unjust systems, institutions and processes in the world as we know it. These assumptions about the abolitionist project - and there are many, as I keep finding out - are not necessarily wrong, and they are certainly hotly debated, with considerable complexity and nuance. However, what is often overlooked is that abolitionists are equally motivated in ‘building the future from the present, in all the ways we can’.

Restorative Justice (RJ) is a way of responding to harm and ‘crime’ that focuses on accountability and repair rather than punishment. It offers people who have been harmed, and people who have caused harm, the opportunity to have a structured conversation about what happened, what it has been like, and what can be done now.

“What have we done to our fellow man,

Love is censored, it's kept within”

A Poem by Michael

Prisons were designed as a tool for social control, built to punish the poor and quell social unrest. The harms prison cause to individuals and families are felt most keenly by poor communities. Prison expansion will only compound this burden. Abolitionists call for divestment and alternatives to the broken criminal justice system.

It should really shock us that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment after visiting the women’s prisons in Ireland had sufficient reason to remind the Irish Authorities that ‘Any force used on a pregnant woman must be appropriate, justified and proportionate, other less invasive and de-escalation techniques should always be resorted to first.’

The illness of overincarceration has been spreading for decades in the Irish prison system. It will not be cured with a single intervention but a steady course of decarceral treatments. Similarly, decades of State neglect of communities will require a long-term commitment of resources. But having the correct diagnosis is a vital starting point for a response.