Abolition and the Welfare State: Implications for Social Welfare

Abstract

Prison abolition has emerged as a new framework for critical analysis, policies, and practices with implications for social welfare. Mobilized through a series of social movement events and formations from the late 1990s, prison abolition has taken on public prominence since the summer of 2020 and unprecedented U.S. and global protests of racialized police violence. While proponents of abolition have called for the dismantling of the carceral state or that sphere of the state represented by policing, jails, and prisons, the implications for the welfare state have been less clear. This conceptual article provides an overview of the welfare state and its development since the New Deal, outlining critical debates regarding its contributions to well-being as well as its punitive functions. Building upon David Garland's categories of welfare state sectors, the article offers an initial framing and set of analytical questions for further inquiry into abolitionist informed frameworks and strategies with regard to the welfare state.