🚨 Abolitionist Professors Say Rapists Should Face “Care and Accountability Circles,” Not Punishment Seattle University law professor Dean Spade and Birkbeck criminology professor S. Lamble take prison abolition to its hardest question. What happens to rapists and people who commit serious sexual violence? Hovering over the entire discussion is... Spade’s opening call for a much larger movement engaged in “militant struggle” and “fighting back,” language that goes largely unexamined as the conversation turns to sexual violence and abolition. Spade argues that “care and accountability circles work better than punishing people who have engaged in sexual harm.” Lamble then addresses what they call the “what about the rapist question,” rejecting the idea of being “an abolitionist except for rapists” and insisting that even in these cases, abolitionist politics must maintain that “no one is disposable.” The conversation also ties abolitionism directly to trans politics. Spade rejects the instinct to answer attacks by saying “we’re not sexual predators,” while Lamble argues that fears of sexual violence are routinely attached to trans people, especially in bathroom debates. Rather than simply separating falsely stigmatized trans people from those who have actually committed sexual harm, their argument challenges the broader logic of treating either category as disposable.show more

Stu Smith

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