Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: What Would a World Without Prisons Be Like?
Date: January 24, 2020
Host: David Remnick (with Kai Wright)
Guests: Paul Butler (Law Professor, former federal prosecutor), Sujatha Baliga (Attorney, Director of the Restorative Justice Project)

Main Theme:

This episode explores the concept and practice of prison abolition—reimagining justice without incarceration. Through personal stories and expert insights, it examines misconceptions, real-world alternatives, the roots of mass incarceration, and the vision for a future beyond prisons.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Framing Prison Abolition (00:54–02:36)

• Misconceptions & Definitions:
  • Many listeners perceive "prison abolition" as a radical or confusing idea (00:54, Kai Wright).
  • Sujatha Baliga describes abolition as stemming from practical and moral failures of prisons to create safety or rehabilitation, especially considering racial injustice (01:30).

    “Mass incarceration and mass criminalization…has not met even its own stated goals of keeping us safer, of deterring crime and harm, of rehabilitating folks… It has played itself out in extremely race based and racist ways.” — Sujatha Baliga [01:30]

  • Paul Butler: Initially found abolition “crazy”—but his prosecutorial experience locking up mainly poor, Black, and Latinx people changed his perspective. Abolition is a gradual process, not an immediate release for all (02:36).

    “Prison abolition doesn’t mean that everybody who’s locked up gets to come home tomorrow. Think of it as a process of gradual decarceration… keeping an eye on public safety.” — Paul Butler [03:13]

2. Addressing Violence Without Prisons (04:10–05:35)

• The "Dangerous Few":
  • Butler introduces the concept that only a very small “dangerous few” may need supervision.
• Survivors' Realities:
  • Baliga explains most violence—especially domestic—never enters the criminal justice system, and when it does, outcomes can make survivors feel less safe.

    “As a survivor myself… I have never, ever, thought to contact the system to make me more safe.” — Sujatha Baliga [04:44]

  • Solutions include community-supported, structured accountability—not vigilantism.

3. Personal Stories: Why Abolition? (05:35–08:26)

• Sujatha Baliga's Experience:
  • Shares her history as a survivor of child sexual abuse, and her dissatisfaction with systems in place for survivors, particularly as a woman of color in a racially hostile environment.
  • Describes how, as a child, she saw reporting the abuse as having more risks than benefits, fearing her family’s future and her own cultural displacement (05:47).
• Accountability vs. Binary Justice:
  • Baliga critiques the criminal legal system for putting survivors through adversarial, traumatizing processes.

    “I cannot imagine something closer to gaslighting than the experience of being cross examined. Abolition… isn’t just about ending the prisons. It’s about ending binary processes which pit us as us/them, right/wrong.” — Sujatha Baliga [08:18]

4. What is Restorative Justice? (08:26–09:52)

• Kai Wright Explains:
  • Restorative justice moves away from punishment toward accountability and repair. Language shifts from “victim” and “offender” to “survivor” and “person who did harm.”
  • The process is survivor-driven, variable in duration, and aims for actual transformation, not exile.

5. The Prosecutor's Awakening (09:53–12:19)

• Paul Butler on Systemic Failure:
  • Wanted safety, fairness, and accountability but realized the system fails on all counts.
  • Prosecutorial success often means leveraging plea bargains; “95% of people who are prosecuted plead guilty.” [11:59]

    “I wanted to be a prosecutor because I don’t like bullies. I stopped being a prosecutor because I don’t like bullies.” — Paul Butler [12:15]

• Personal Experience:
  • Butler recounts being wrongfully arrested: “I wasn’t even a human being to that person [the judge]. I was just a cog in the system.” [12:59]

6. Can Alternatives Work? (13:28–16:33)

• Challenges of Community Solutions:
  • Restorative processes require survivor consent and flexible participation (letters, proxies, phone calls) (14:10).
• Examples of Restorative Diversion:
  • Impact Justice’s diversion programs in multiple U.S. cities have seen significant reductions in recidivism (44% drop in Oakland). Cases are handled outside court, focusing on understanding harm, accountability, and reparation (15:06–16:33).

    “Immediately handing them over to communities…helping them come to a deeper understanding of how to be accountable without feeling lousy about yourself…but instead getting to feel great about yourself when you fix stuff that you mess up.” — Sujatha Baliga [16:13]

7. Practical Steps Toward Abolition (16:33–18:47)

• Paul Butler’s Three-Step Process:
  • Moratorium: Stop building new prisons.
  • Decarceration: Release current inmates where safe.
  • Excarceration: Prevent entry into the system.
• Reinvesting in Communities:
  • The “million dollar blocks” phenomenon: massive public spending on incarceration for small, high-policing neighborhoods could instead fund health, education, and job programs.

    “What if rather than spending money putting people in cages, it was spent on health care, on better schools, on job training?” — Paul Butler [18:20]

8. Reframing Justice for Survivors (18:47–19:41)

• Metaphor on Options for Survivors:
  • Baliga shares Danielle Sered's powerful “hamburger stand in the desert” analogy, criticizing the false assumption that survivors always want imprisonment for those who’ve hurt them.

    “We say that justice is punishment…No one has interrogated the question about whether or not survivors actually want that.” — Sujatha Baliga, paraphrasing Danielle Sered [19:30]

9. Timeline for Change & Final Reflections (19:41–20:27)

• How Long Will It Take?
  • Butler compares prison abolition to slavery abolition, estimating “conservatively, 200 years.” But expresses certainty that “in a hundred years we’re not going to be locking human beings in cages.”

    “We’ll understand then, as we understand about slavery now, that it was immoral. And we’ll also understand about prison, that it just didn’t work.” — Paul Butler [20:10]

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Prison abolition doesn’t mean that everybody who’s locked up gets to come home tomorrow. Think of it as a process of gradual decarceration.”
  — Paul Butler [03:13]
• “Abolition… isn’t just about ending the prisons. It’s about ending binary processes which pit us as us/them, right/wrong.”
  — Sujatha Baliga [08:18]
• “I wanted to be a prosecutor because I don’t like bullies. I stopped being a prosecutor because I don’t like bullies.”
  — Paul Butler [12:15]
• “We say that justice is punishment…No one has interrogated the question about whether or not survivors actually want that.”
  — Sujatha Baliga, paraphrasing Danielle Sered [19:30]
• “In a hundred years we’re not going to be locking human beings in cages because we’ll understand then, as we understand about slavery now, that it was immoral.”
  — Paul Butler [20:10]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:54 — What is prison abolition?
• 03:13 — Gradual decarceration, “the dangerous few”
• 05:47 — Baliga’s personal story and critique of system
• 08:26 — Introduction to restorative justice
• 10:03 — Prosecutor’s realization and critique of plea bargaining
• 12:27 — Butler’s own experience with wrongful prosecution
• 15:06 — Real-world examples of restorative justice diversion
• 16:54 — Policy steps: Moratorium, decarceration, excarceration
• 18:47 — Questioning whether survivors actually want punitive justice
• 19:49 — Realistic timeline for abolition movements

Tone & Style

The episode is honest, thoughtful, and personal with moments of candor, direct critique, and emotional storytelling. Both guests speak from lived experience—inviting listeners to reconsider deeply-held beliefs about justice, safety, and community healing.

This summary is intended for those who wish to understand the contours and highlights of the discussion without listening to the full episode. It captures the main arguments, personal insights, and key takeaways around the idea of a world without prisons and what it would take to reach it.