Memes of Production

You make an extremely abstract and general statement. Then you give very specific cases as to why your abstraction is correct, with absolutely nothing connecting the abstraction to the specific. You take a huge system of oppression like the prison industrial complex, all of the horror and injustice that it creates, and then justify its existence because of two specific cases. Interesting how both those cases were white men when BIPOC people are much more likely to be victimized by police and carcerial punishment.

Those cases to point to a very thin segment of the population, so it too is an abstraction. No discussion about if society somehow produces killers, like for instance school shooters in the USA.

Even though there are problems with your argument, I admit there are problems with the demand "abolish police and prisons". Because often there isnt discussion as to how exactly we can practically do it. Like what if we could abolish 50% of police and prisons, then more, then more? The word "abolish" does have many of the problems that maximal and radical demands often have. But then, you need to consider why people are totally uncompromising on their commitment to abolition.

The abolitionists before and during the civil war were a very slim minority of people, and they could not conceive of how slavery would actually end. Lincoln and the North did not want to end slavery, they wanted to preserve the union. It wasnt until the slaves freed themselves and went over to the northern armies to heroically fight for their freedom, that the process of abolishing slavery was inevitable and irreversible.

But then prison labor was used to subsidize parts of the economy where paying free workers was still unprofitable. As such, the tradition continues to this day.

So if you would like to argue that institutionalized state-slavery is justified because of the presence of a few serial killers, then it shows how little will you have to even think about it, and that you would rather just not think about the suffering of all the people victimized by the police and prison.

And that is your right, to stay ignorant on this issue. I'm sure there are many domains in which you are exceedingly knowledgeable. But many people are and have been directly and severely harmed by the prison industrial complex and the police, and when you mak such substanceless, abstract arguments, then it appears to those people you are on the side of the system that victimizes and exploits.

You might ask yourself which group you have more in common with. You dont have to want to free serial killers, you just have to want to free people who deserve to be free. Instead of ignorance, ask yourself, could this system that affects millions of people, more than anyone else in the world, often by orders of magnitude, could this system be made more just? Could the number of people incarcerated be decreased? And then either get to work making that happen, or get out of the damn way