The list of things the Democratic Socialists of America want to abolish is long: federal immigration enforcement agencies and the borders they police, the Pentagon, the Senate, the Electoral College, the two-party system, and the Constitution’s separation of powers among them. But it’s the existence of America’s prisons, and the justice system that consigns convicts to incarceration, that seems to irritate the DSA’s vanguard most.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called for “prison abolition” designed to “abolish our carceral system.” The Democratic nominee in New York’s 13th district, Darializa Avila Chevalier, couldn’t agree more. “I am an abolitionist and oppose reform that entrenches the expansion of the carceral state,” she wrote. CNN described Zohran Mamdani as “evasive” when the New York City mayor was asked whether he sought the end of incarceration as we know it. “There are prisons,” he replied with remarkable obtuseness when asked if there “should be” prisons. Mamdani skeptics were probably not persuaded that he had abandoned his longtime confusion over the “purpose” of prisons.
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