Toward an Abolitionist Practice of Psychology: Reimagining Psychology’s Relationship With the Criminal Justice System

History of Abolition and Psychology

The term abolition here refers specifically to abolishing the prison-industrial complex (PIC). Activist and organizer Rachel Herzing defines the PIC as “the symbiotic relationship between public and private interests that employ imprisonment, policing, surveillance, the courts, and their attendant cultural apparatuses as a means of maintaining social, economic, and political inequities” (Schenwar & Law, 2020, p. 8). As the name suggests, PIC abolition is about endings. It seeks to dismantle our current systems of policing and incarceration as well as all systems that operate under a logic of carceral control. But PIC abolition is also equally, if not more so, about beginnings. It invites us to imagine and create the world we want to live in—not the world we feel resigned to settle for. It urges us to support structures of accountability and care that are fundamentally nonpunitive and that meet people’s needs, from clean water and safe housing to a process of redress and healing when harm is done. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore explains, “Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions” (Abolition Journal, 2020, Welcome section). Abolitionist efforts to reduce our reliance on policing and incarceration have been active for decades, with Black women and grassroots community organizers and coalitions driving this work. As a political vision and an organizing strategy, PIC abolition is nothing new. Psychology and other social sciences, though, have thus far resisted adopting an explicitly abolitionist or decarceral framework.

Although some branches of psychology have incorporated social justice efforts into their practice competencies, the scientist-practitioner-advocate model has garnered deserved attention in recent years (Mallinckrodt et al., 2014). The alignment of these three roles engenders the creation of a social justice–informed teaching model. This type of training provides foundational knowledge in discerning between action on behalf of the client and action with the client, both on the micro- and macrolevels. This is essential when pushing for a field of psychology in which clients of oppressed communities are empowered. Hoffman et al. (2016) remind us that “with regard to racism and other forms of prejudice, psychology too often has encouraged people to become comfortable in their role of being oppressed and marginalized instead of empowering people to stand up to injustice” (p. 607). While many seek to achieve reform by changing the way the field operates, it might be helpful to push for reform at the entry level, so as not to further perpetuate a system that needs to be constantly overhauled. It is important to remember that, as Montero (2007) highlights, “the process of liberation must continually be reinitiated even as one believes it has been accomplished” (p. 529).

Additionally, humanistic, community, and liberation psychology have long called on the field of psychology to become more social justice oriented. At the core of humanistic psychology is the belief that every human being possesses the qualities of irreducibility, uniqueness and context, self-awareness, autonomy, and self-actualization (Chávez et al., 2016). This belief lays the groundwork for dedication to social justice work such that not to do so would lead to certain “conviction by its own principles” (Hoffman et al., 2016, p. 607). Liberation psychology takes a strengths-based approach to social justice work and psychological healing. Liberation psychology emphasizes the importance of understanding the lived experience of poor and oppressed populations and utilizing these lived experiences as a means toward one’s own liberation and self-actualization. This approach rejects an exclusively white, Western perspective in favor of allowing those with lived experience of marginalization to write their own narratives (Tate et al., 2013). The theoretical frameworks that underlie these subfields’ approaches to humanity and care are directly in line with abolitionist principles. They offer foundational conceptualizations of the roots of psychological harm and promote models of care that aim to facilitate the healing of both the affected individual and the communities and systems they belong to.

Psychology is not the first or the only field to examine inequities and systemic racism present in the United States. Critical race theory (CRT), an identity-conscious intervention, emerged in the 1980s as a means of challenging the dominant frames of the law. Quickly, CRT emerged as a leading framework when seeking to recognize and dismantle systemic racism and oppression (Salter & Adams, 2013; Salter & Haugen, 2017). CRT has since been adopted by various fields and has more recently been urged to join forces with the social sciences (Carbado & Roithmayr, 2014). Salter and Adams (2013) assert that CRT has direct implications for the field of psychology. First, CRT asserts that racism is deeply enmeshed in American society and is “not limited to isolated cases of bigotry but instead infuses everyday life in mainstream institutions” (Salter & Haugen, 2017, p. 125). To counter this constructional inequity, psychologists are urged to refrain from implementing a perpetrator perspective, which Freeman (1977) defines as “one that is focused on culpability (or not) of racist actors rather than targets’ experience of racist harm.” A common defense to the notion of systemic racism is what CRT calls whitewashing or laundering race, in which one diminishes the force of racism at play by making “race-based outcomes appear to be the consequence of something other than racism” (Salter & Haugen, 2017, p. 125). To counteract ignorance, critical race psychology calls for the extinction of terms like colorblindness and race-neutrality and instead advocates for the adoption of an identity-conscious framework in which marginalized communities are invited to share their experiences as a means of garnering power for epistemological diversity (Salter & Adams, 2013). This creates a direct link between CRT and liberation psychology. CRT strongly supports the use of delineating history through marginalized communities’ perspectives while cautioning interest convergence, or “the idea that broad-based support of civil rights for people of color emerges only when it aligns with interests of white Americans” (Salter & Haugen, 2017, p. 125). Harris (1995) stated that in society, being white is profitable, so those who benefit from whiteness continue to defend sociological institutions that perpetuate racial privilege. Thus, psychologists are urged to “disrupt ‘business as usual’ practices that ignore the ways in which everyday frames are gendered, classed, and racialized” (Salter & Haugen, 2017, p. 128). Bringing to light and dismantling the force of systemic racism in the society of the United States is a large task, but it is one that can be accomplished by integrating interdisciplinary work, such as CRT, into psychological practices.

Law Enforcement and Policing

Diversion is an umbrella term that includes a wide range of programs that aim to keep people out of the criminal justice system. DeMatteo et al. (2013) explain,

The offender is “diverted” from standard prosecution and into specialized community-based programming that is better able to address his or her needs. Diversion may occur during the initial contact with law enforcement or emergency service personnel (Intercept 1 [of the Sequential Intercept Model]) or following arrest. (p. 66)

Diversion, as a concept, holds enormous potential and aligns well with abolitionist principles—connect people to services that meet their needs, not to agents of the law whose primary tools are detention and punishment. Unfortunately, many of the diversion initiatives that have gained traction in recent decades do not create alternatives to law enforcement, but rather they expand its scope.

After deinstitutionalization, law enforcement officers became the de facto gatekeepers of mental health services in the community; they increasingly became the first, and often the only, responders in mental health crisis situations (Lamb et al., 2002). Police officers are now positioned at the front lines of our delivery system for mental health services—1 in 10 calls to police involve people with untreated serious mental illness, and approximately one third of people who visit psychiatric emergency rooms are brought there by police (Fuller et al., 2015). Additionally, people with mental health issues are overincarcerated. Of people held in U.S. jails, 44% have a history of mental illness, and a considerable portion (14.5% of males and 31% of females) have a serious mental illness (Bronson & Berzofsky, 2017; Steadman et al., 2009). Placing officers in this role has had deadly consequences for people with mental illness. Approximately one in four people fatally shot by police showed signs of mental illness (Fuller et al., 2015; Saleh et al., 2018). People with mental illness are anywhere from 7 to 16 times more likely than other civilians to be killed in a police encounter, and this risk appears highest for people with mental illness who are African American (Fuller et al., 2015; Saleh et al., 2018).

Considering that law enforcement officers were never intended to be mental health workers, one would expect that efforts to solve this problem would focus on avoiding contact with the police and creating alternatives that meet the needs of people experiencing mental health emergencies—diversion in the truest sense of the word. Instead, one of the most popular reform efforts in this sphere involves doubling down on our investment in police officers as mental health workers. The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model was born in Memphis in 1988 and quickly spread across the country (Compton et al., 2014). There are now nearly 2,700 CIT programs operating in the United States, representing an estimated 15% to 17% of total police agencies (Rogers et al., 2019). Officers who volunteer and are approved to be part of their department’s CIT program undergo a 40-hour training on mental health disorders and crisis de-escalation, and those officers are then designated as the frontline response for calls involving a person with mental illness (Compton et al., 2008).

Some studies indicate that CIT-trained officers are more knowledgeable about schizophrenia, more likely to use verbal engagement as a de-escalation tactic, and more likely to transport a person to a treatment facility rather than arresting them when compared with their non-CIT-trained peers (Compton et al., 2006; Compton et al., 2008; Compton et al., 2014). Other studies have found no differences in rates of arrest or overall use of force between officers who are CIT trained and those who are not (Compton et al., 2014; Steadman et al., 2000; Watson et al., 2010). The training, policies, and tools that form the basis of an officer’s job are designed to ingrain a threat-focused mind set and carry out policing functions, not to provide safety and support. Moreover, most police officers do not have special training in responding to mental health crises. For instance, in a 2004 survey of police departments across Pennsylvania, almost half of the respondents indicated that they lacked confidence in their ability to respond to calls involving people with mental illness (Ruiz & Miller, 2004). Trying to reform police agencies into playing a part that they were never meant to play is at best an uphill battle, and at worst it is a dangerous approach that puts the lives of vulnerable community members at risk. CIT may have certain benefits, but the severity of the problem demands abolition, not reform. An abolitionist approach does not seek to turn police into better mental health professionals but rather to create community-based alternatives that avoid relying on police altogether.

Community-based alternatives to policing exist and are rapidly developing across the United States. In Eugene, Oregon, the Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) model has been in operation for more than 40 years, sending mobile crisis intervention teams consisting of a medic and a crisis worker—both unarmed—to respond to many mental health–related calls (White Bird Clinic, 2020). In 2019, out of the 24,000 calls the CAHOOTS program responded to, police backup was requested in only 150 instances (White Bird Clinic, 2020). Since its launch in June of 2020, Denver, Colorado’s Support Team Assisted Response program has sent unarmed paramedics and social workers to respond to 748 calls; thus far they have not called for police backup (Sachs, 2021). These programs are not perfect (the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, for example, is funded through a contract with the city’s police department), but they represent efforts to introduce alternatives to the police, rather than just new versions of the police. They also serve as an example of the generative nature of this work—an abolitionist framework demands police abolition, but it also requires us to fund community services, such as mental health care and substance abuse treatment. In 2017, the Denver Police Department had a budget of $241 million—a near 50% increase from its budget in 1992, even though crime rates decreased during that period (Beck, 2020). What would it look like if we redirected that money to programs that are entirely separate from law enforcement and are designed specifically to respond to mental health–related crises in a safe and nonpunitive manner?

Judicial System

Because people with mental health and substance abuse issues are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, another point of intervention that has received much attention is the courtroom. The first drug courts in the United States were established in the late 1980s (DeMatteo et al., 2013). Recognizing that standard prosecution was both costly and ineffective in deterring reoffending for defendants with substance abuse problems, these courts sought instead to implement a specialized approach to address the underlying problems contributing to illegal behavior. After drug courts came other types of “problem-solving courts,” including but not limited to mental health courts, family dependency treatment courts, domestic violence courts, and veterans courts (Berenson, 2010; DeMatteo et al., 2013). Defining characteristics of mental health courts, in particular, include a specialized docket devoted to defendants with mental illness; incorporating a less adversarial approach, which encourages collaboration between the judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel; agreement from the defendant to adhere to a treatment plan; regular court appearances for judicial monitoring of the defendant’s compliance; and reduction or dismissal of charges on successful completion of the program (Moore & Hiday, 2006). Although the research on problem-solving courts is mixed and riddled with methodological shortcomings, studies have found that drug courts and mental health courts can yield positive results, in terms of both criminal justice outcomes (e.g., fewer jail days, lower rearrest rates) and clinical outcomes (e.g., reduced drug abuse, greater engagement with mental health treatment; DeMatteo et al., 2013; Heilbrun et al., 2012).

Expanding the jurisdiction of the judicial system to include responsibility for providing access to treatment ultimately furthers a vision of society where the judicial system, jails, and prisons are indispensable. In this sense, problem-solving courts and other reforms like CIT training rest on a fundamental paradox: Any approach that increases the funding and functions of law enforcement cannot simultaneously claim to be reducing our reliance on it. These reforms are well intentioned, but if we are attempting in earnest to reduce contact with the criminal justice system, then we must devote our attention to routes of service delivery that are proactive and nonpunitive. Some may argue that the court, because of its power to offer incentives and impose sanctions, is uniquely positioned to compel people to engage in treatment. To the contrary, data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration indicate that there is little difference in treatment completion rates between people referred to drug treatment by a criminal justice agency and those referred by other sources and that those in the former group are four times more likely to be incarcerated (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2009). A report from the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that the typical adult drug court reduced recidivism by about 8.7%, which is lower than the 18% reduction observed in drug treatment supervised by probation, and comparable with the 8.3% reduction observed in community-based drug treatment programs (Drake et al., 2009). It appears that the benefits touted by problem-solving courts may be more attributable to treatment than they are to the courts themselves. In other words, the target population for drug courts and mental health courts could be served just as effectively in the community without the drawbacks of a court-based program that mandates treatment.

If it is treatment and other supportive services that make the difference and not the pressure or incentives presented by the judicial system, then we would be well advised to focus our efforts on building a network of front-end services that are both comprehensive and accessible to people in the community, rather than continuously attempting to turn legal entities (in this case, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys) into therapeutic ones. Making high-quality treatment and other supportive services available to all people regardless of their socioeconomic status is not a pipe dream—it is a moral imperative and one of the most logical and effective strategies we can pursue to reduce the number of people with mental health and substance abuse issues who end up arrested or incarcerated. Munetz and Griffin (2006) have called an accessible and effective mental health system “the ultimate intercept,” describing it as “undoubtedly the most effective means of preventing the criminalization of people with mental illness” (p. 545). For instance, decriminalizing drug use and other behaviors for which people with substance abuse or mental health issues are often arrested is another strategy that promises to reduce incarceration by preventing it in the first place. Recently, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize small amounts of all drugs (Kim, 2020). These and other strategies together can form an approach to addiction and mental illness that is proactive and health centered rather than reactive and punitive.

Immigration Evaluations

To divest the field of psychology from its relationship with policing, we must also consider how we can engage in policing that may not directly involve police officers themselves. Using an abolitionist framework, the term policing refers to an institution that is empowered by the state to inflict social control and reinforce oppressive social and economic relationships rather than simply a group of people who wear a certain uniform (Critical Resistance, 2020). This distinction is helpful in reminding us that “policing is a system and a social relation” in which virtually anyone can participate (Critical Resistance, 2020, p. 8). To commit to an abolition-focused psychology, one of the first steps must include examining the ways in which psychologists engage in policing by exercising state-sanctioned power and control.

One arena in which psychologists aid in the power and control of the state is the administration of immigration evaluations. We include these in our review because the system of immigration policies and practices in the United States has caused harm since its inception and continues to do so. The current human rights violations taking place in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities harkens back to APA’s knowledge of national security interrogations and torture at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan interrogation centers as well as their refusal to sanction psychologists found to have designed and participated in the torture (Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, 2014). The 2014 Hoffman Report concluded that the APA was indeed involved in loosening ethical constraints and creating a justification for torture of prisoners suspected of terrorism (Risen, 2015). After the release of the Hoffman Report, the APA adopted Resolution 23B, which banned psychologists’ participation in interrogations determined to be illegal by the Geneva Convention and the United Nations Convention Against Torture and sought to remove psychologists from positions that operate outside international law (Democracy Now! 2015). Regardless of whether psychologists who work in other carceral environments view their roles as separate from such atrocities, an abolition-focused psychology calls on us to scrutinize our participation in these systems and read our silence as complicity in the social control exerted by these institutions.

A core tenet of PIC abolition is that human beings do not belong in cages. When discussions turn to ending mass incarceration, an oft-overlooked fact is that immigration detention is one of the fastest growing means of confinement and incarceration in the United States (Bernstein, 2007) and has only increased in recent years (TRAC Immigration, 2019). Undocumented individuals who are not classified as refugees are not entitled to protections under the law and are at extreme risk for detention and deportation at any time. This includes legal representation in immigration proceedings such that many individuals go through proceedings without an accurate or full understanding of the process (Barber-Rioja & Garcia-Mansilla, 2019). The number of undocumented individuals who are detained and incarcerated has appreciably increased since the 1990s, likely due in part to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 (Barber-Rioja & Garcia-Mansilla, 2019). In 1995, approximately 85,000 undocumented individuals were incarcerated in detention facilities or jails, and by 2018, this number had risen to approximately 396,448 (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2018). Restrictive, zero-tolerance immigration policies ensure that almost all adults who enter the country illegally are immediately detained and prosecuted and their children placed in shelters or the child welfare system (Barber-Rioja & Garcia-Mansilla, 2019). Such policies have essentially made seeking a different life for oneself or one’s family a crime punishable by separation from one’s children and family; confinement in overcrowded, unsanitary detention centers; and potential exposure to daily violence.

Psychologists’ roles in the immigration court system vary, and the reliance on psychological professionals in decision-making procedures for immigration proceedings has greatly increased over the past two decades (Barber-Rioja & Garcia-Mansilla, 2019). Psychological assessment can be utilized by immigration courts in order to determine if an individual has a serious mental illness for which treatment is inaccessible in their country of origin, to ascertain the psychological effects of persecution and/or torture, and to predict the potential for hardship should an individual return to their country of origin among many others (Barber-Rioja & Garcia-Mansilla, 2019). It is clear that to make such serious, life-altering decisions, especially regarding trauma and mental disorders, psychological expertise and perspective are paramount. However, psychologists performing these evaluations must also take the very experience of being subjected to harsh immigration policies into account when they are formulating their opinions and recommendations.

Psychologists are also sometimes asked to conduct risk assessments in order to determine if an individual should be detained or allowed to await court proceedings in their community. This begets many questions of complicity in harm and trauma inflicted by the state. First, it calls on us to question whether the ethical principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence, justice, and respect for people’s rights and dignity (APA, 2017b) are being upheld when we recommend that a person be detained by a system that we know to be inflicting harm. Second, we must question the very means by which we arrive at these decisions. Recently, some widely used psychological risk assessments have been found to lack significant validity with non-white individuals and communities or to be outright racially biased against non-white and non-U.S. born people in both adolescent and adult populations (Leguizamo et al., 2017; Perrault et al., 2017). For example, Leguizamo et al. (2017) found that the Static-99 and the Static-99R, the most utilized actuarial risk assessment measures for individuals who have committed sexual offenses, were not effective in predicting sexual recidivism in Latino males who were born outside the United States or Puerto Rico. Given the prevalence of Latinos in the United States, if the assessments psychologists are using to decide whether to subject someone to detention and incarceration is not even a reliable measure of risk for such a large percentage of individuals, continuing to use it with this population is unethical at best. Additionally, this calls into question the reliability and validity of other violence risk assessments utilized with non-white and non-U.S. born individuals.

An abolition-focused psychological framework demands that we consider more than the trauma experienced by individuals in their country of origin or the potential to experience such if deported. This framework asks us to consider the ways in which undocumented individuals have likely experienced trauma simply by being party to the immigration process (e.g., arrested, separated from family, taken from their community, held in detention centers). Reports and psychological opinions that are used for decision making in immigration courts tend to emphasize the harms sustained in a person’s country of origin (either before immigration or on deportation), while the immense harm likely experienced during the process of immigration proceedings is minimized. Taking this into account, it is difficult to view the psychologist’s role in these proceedings as anything other than complicit in the harm that is done by this system.

Conclusion

The APA has begun to embrace its role in social justice efforts; take as examples its contribution of an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges to put forth evidence supporting the validity of same-sex partnerships and its public statements against the use of solitary confinement for juveniles (APA, 2017a). APA’s willingness to take political action is a welcome step, but in order to truly implement sustainable action that guarantees long-lasting effects, we must do so from a decarceral, abolitionist framework. Using an abolitionist lens, we can begin to examine other larger systems of social control in which psychologists and other mental health professionals participate, such as social security and disability claim evaluations, evaluations of parental fitness, and other assessments done in service of the child welfare system, which has historically read Blackness and poverty as abuse and neglect. Psychology is certainly not the only social science that has a long history of complicity with oppressive institutions. Notably, the field of social work is confronting its historical allegiance with entities of policing and social control and moving toward what Jacobs et al. (2021) call an anticarceral social work. Psychology’s professional, ethical guidelines and commitment to social justice compel us to reconsider the way we operate, from the ground up, in order to divest from and ultimately dismantle systems of oppression and control in which we participate.

PIC abolition seems to ask more questions than it answers, and this can seem daunting, especially when applying this framework to large-scale systemic change. An abolition-focused psychology challenges us to question everything we know about our research, prevention, practice, and outreach. We must consistently ask ourselves if we are using our wealth of knowledge about the human condition to promote individual practices as well as systemic policies that actually align with what we know makes individuals and communities safer and more fulfilled. We must use our knowledge about oppression, trauma, risk and protective factors, and healing to transform psychology from a largely reactive profession to a proactive profession by dismantling sources of harm at their root. Psychologists are uniquely positioned to take action on many levels. Indeed, engagement in advocacy or abolition may vary based on subdisciplines in psychology, expertise, and/or psychological practice (i.e., academic, clinical, research, consultation). By integrating the principles of liberation, humanistic, community psychology, and interdisciplinary studies, such as CRT, into the more individualized arenas of our practice, we can transform psychotherapy into an experience that focuses on autonomy and liberation for oppressed individuals and communities. Additionally, we must acknowledge and embrace our responsibility to address anti-Blackness, racism, and white supremacy with our white clients (see Grzanka et al., 2019).

An abolition-focused psychology must also use its research and scholarship to advocate for larger, systemic changes. When doing this work, an abolitionist perspective can help psychologists determine the difference between abolitionist reforms and reformist reforms. Abolitionist reforms take steps toward creating the conditions that would make it possible for us to one day give up our reliance on the PIC altogether (Critical Resistance, n.d.). A key difference between reformist reforms and abolitionist reforms is what, ultimately, the reform hopes for. Does it hope to put a glossy finish on institutions that were never meant to better human life? Or does it hope truly to move us toward long-lasting healing and growth for individuals and communities? Abolition offers the field of psychology both concrete options to improve our connections with our clients as well as a lens through which to evaluate our current work. By demanding that psychologists first think more broadly about the harm done by the systems of which we are a part and second to actively take steps to dismantle them, abolition is the necessary framework by which psychology will uphold several of its core ethical standards: beneficence, nonmaleficence, and respect for people’s rights and dignity.