Ocasio-Cortez Calls for Abolishing Prisons in America
Democrat says America needs 'to have a real conversation’ about 'prison abolition'
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Radical Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for America to abolish all of its prisons in her latest far-left push.
Ocasio-Cortez made the controversial calls in a pair of tweets Monday morning.
The New York Democratic lawmaker is demanding “a real conversation about decarceration [and] prison abolition in this country.”
She added that: “A cage is a cage is a cage. And humans don’t belong in them.”
The radical left-wing movement for "prison abolition" is a push to abolish prisons altogether — even for violent offenders.
The Democratic Socialists of America, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a part, voted in August to create “a national Police & Prison Abolition Working Group.”
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“Mass incarceration is our American reality. It is a system whose logic evolved from the same lineage as Jim Crow, American apartheid, & slavery,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.
“To end it, we have to change. That means we need to have a real conversation about decarceration & prison abolition in this country.”
“Yesterday morning I spoke with a woman who was thrown in Rikers as a teenager.
"Put in solitary confinement for MONTHS, aka torture. Force-fed pills.
"The conditions were so bad, she too had drank out of toilets,” she added.
“A cage is a cage is a cage. And humans don’t belong in them.”
I know the term “prison abolition” is breaking some people’s brains. The right is already freaking out.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 7, 2019
Yet the US incarcerates more than anywhere in the world.
We have more than enough room to close many of our prisons and explore just alternatives to incarceration.
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Yesterday morning I spoke with a woman who was thrown in Rikers as a teenager. Put in solitary confinement for MONTHS, aka torture. Force-fed pills.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 7, 2019
The conditions were so bad, she too had drank out of toilets.
A cage is a cage is a cage. And humans don’t belong in them.
I know the term “prison abolition” is breaking some people’s brains. The right is already freaking out.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 7, 2019
Yet the US incarcerates more than anywhere in the world.
We have more than enough room to close many of our prisons and explore just alternatives to incarceration.
/1
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According to research by the Manhattan Institute’s Rafael A. Mangual, 60% of the inmates in state prisons—which house the overwhelming majority of prisoners across the country—”are serving time for murder, rape, assault, robbery, or burglary—four times the number convicted only of drug offenses.”
“We have more than enough room to close many of our prisons and explore just alternatives to incarceration,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a follow-up tweet.
“Our lawmaking process means we come to solutions together, [and] either way we should work to an end where our prison system is dramatically smaller than it is today,” she added.
