This isn’t even a discussion because no alternative proposal has been made. It’s just shitting on the current system. So far the only alternative that’s truly been offered is no system at all (because everyone is human and deserve better even if they are truly awful or some utopian hippie shit like that) which is an insane concept because it means no consequences for your actions so no laws.
My ideal criminal justice system would contain:
1) No cash bail. If you are charged with a crime, you are brought in for standard booking and held for 24 hours. During that 24 hours, there would be a legally required risk assessment for danger to the public and flight risk. Unless there is severe risk of public harm or near certainty of flight by the offender, they are let go from the station. Kentucky has implemented an almost identical system and has seen early success in the program. Obviously there would need to be a lot of input from a variety of sources as to what goes into the risk assessment algorithm to prevent as much implicit bias as possible, but it would be far better than cash bail as currently implemented.
2) Reduced court costs for defendants below the poverty level and no charge whatsoever for public defenders. North Carolina is fucking awful about overcharging indigent defendants and then issuing warrants and arresting for non-payment, even when the judge was made explicitly aware that payment was impossible. John Pfaff, law professor at Fordham, is a leading scholar on mass incarceration and in the last few days on Twitter has highlighted many issues surrounding debilitating court costs and the lack of understanding and criminalization of poverty that comes with those costs. He’s a mandatory follow if you are at all interested in the problems with mass incarceration. @JohnFPfaff is his handle.
3) Job training and placement programs for post-incarceration life. One of the biggest indicators of recidivism is unemployment in formerly incarcerated Americans. Unemployment for that category of people is far higher than even the national unemployment during the Great Depression. It’s simply unacceptable. Oregon and Washington have done a great job recently in matching unions and contractors with prisons and jails to do training while incarcerated and then helping to land union or contracting jobs after release, and the recidivism rates in those areas has fallen dramatically. Similarly, there are non-profits in California that assist formerly incarcerated Americans find jobs post-incarceration and then subsidize their wages for 13 weeks after getting the job. Results have shown that after the subsidized wages are done, employers keep those formerly incarcerated employees on the job, demonstrating that the biggest issue for these people is getting access to the jobs, not keeping them.
There are more things I would tweak or change, but those are the big 3. Also LGJ, I disagree with your characterization about abolition of prisons. No one is saying there wouldn’t be consequences, but committing a crime does not mean you lose your humanity. Prisons should not be torture chambers, should not be Russian gulags.