Aotearoa / New Zealand

My partner studies criminology, and a guest lecturer came to speak about prison abolition. I was curious about what should happen to serial killers, so she sent him and email and this was his response:

"Thanks for getting in touch - I'm glad you've been talking with your friends about abolition! Believe it or not, this is probably the most common question abolitionists get and I think it's an important one. Prison abolition isn't about opening the prison doors overnight. It's a long-term strategy that aims to prevent the creation of future 'serial killers' by creating a less violent society in the first place. However, even in more peaceful society without prisons, people will continue to hurt each other and sometimes quite seriously. For people who pose a serious and immediate threat to the lives of others, they would need to be securely detained and/or supervised. This would not need to be in a prison, however. A prison involves collecting up all those people. An abolitionist alternative would be for that small number of people to be managed in the communtiy, with pretty strong supervision so that they don't get the opportunity to commit the kind of violence you're talking about. They would also get consistent access to habilitation programmes that are consistently found to be more effective in reducing violence than in-prison programme.

Of course, this is a miniscule group of people and the group of people who cause far more death and destruction are on the boards of corporations that contribute to issues like pollution. An estimated 3,300 people die from pollution in NZ every year - compared to about 50 for murder. https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/air-quality/health-effects-of-air-pollution/#more-than-3300-deaths-from-human-made-air-pollution-in-2016"

I thought this could answer your question as well. I hope you find it useful