stylistic:style_transfer
Abolitionist feminism

Considered an antithesis to carceral feminism, abolitionist feminism seeks to separate deviant behavior from the established criminal justice system, a system that they believe does little to address the roots of crime in society. Abolitionism is described as challenging "conventional definitions of crime and the law, while defying official views of the meanings and effects of punishment". Abolitionists assert that "crime" as it is understood, only exists within the laws that define it, and those laws are created to imprison and isolate members of the "unproductive" population. Penal abolitionists look to the elimination of prisons to solve this problem, though other abolitionists warn that when crime is only viewed as a product of prisons or institutions, "they stunt abolitionist understandings in manners akin to pushing against a 500 year old tree from its trunk and expecting it to topple over without any account for the roots that hold it firmly in the ground." Abolitionist feminist Viviane Saleh-Hanna furthers this theory by theorizing that crime exists within the intersection of racism, imperialism, and sexism – which Saleh-Hanna refers to as the R.I.P. (Racist-Imperialist- Patriarchy). Saleh-Hanna developed this theory with the implementation of her Black Feminist Hauntology. Hauntology refers to the return or persistence of elements from the past, as in the manner of a ghost, and in this case refers to the haunting of society by policies meant to dehumanize, ostracize, and punish populations of people, specifically the Black community. Systems that sought to criminalize and punish Black people, such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, and mass incarceration are seen in this theory as an ever-returning "ghost" of the Racist-Imperialist-Patriarchy.