i don’t know if you’re trying to catch me in a contradiction or what, prison reform is unrealistic and largely unpopular while people are still so indoctrinated and blind to alternatives. people’s minds have to be changed. even my optimistic instincts would not be confident that making this guy pay reparations and work for the community the rest of his life would be acceptable to the victims’ community, maybe they’d take exile as an option that wasn’t confinement or death. i think we should expect to make concessions to expedience and lingering retributive justice-brain in transitional stages—like in Cuba

Put yourself in the shoes of the state, with the state’s resources

the state would not expropriate a murderer-landlord’s property & employ the guy building public housing or teaching anti racism, these are fundamental things to capitalism. you’ve got to appreciate that moving the needle on one issue requires moving others, we can’t do prison abolition without abolishing capitalism, we can’t abolish colonialism without abolishing capitalism. having difficulty imagining or rectifying contradictions in the conditions for one thing under capitalism does not mean it is unworkable, it means we’ve got a lot of work to do.