Another clarification

One of the problems I've had in this series is that I don't really want to talk about 'crime' and clearly I have problems with the idea of 'criminals'. One of the basic ideas of this series is that violence against women is often used to support the existence of the prison and (in)justice system. I see resistance to both violence against women and the prison system as vitally important.

I think the abolishment of the prison system for the vast majority of what is currently classified as crime (particularly drug and property offences) is a relatively simple stance to uphold. I can defend my opposition by focusing on the problems with prison and the (in)justice system and no-one's going to say "what about the pot smokers?" or "what about the shop lifters?".

But I do think that 'what about the rapists?' is an important question. Both because of it's ideological role in upholding the prison system as it currently stands, and because it's something we need to answer.

So I'm mostly going writing about the offences that are already over represented in the discussion. I want to acknowledge that really explicitly, and make it clear taht my definition of "bad things people can do to each other" isn't particularly related to the government's definition of "crime" even though it may seem like it is because that overlap is what I'm discussing in this series.