Abolitionists have a term called "non-reformist reforms" (which I personally believe to be as oxymoronic as it sounds in most cases) which refers to criminal legal reforms that are meant to be progressive but end up reinforcing the inhumanity of the prison system

A good example of a reformist reform would be how PG County attempted to reform its cash bail system. The MD Court of Appeals ruled that cash bail was unconstitutional and that it is only supposed to be a last resort. However, judges got around this by using "no bail"...

...in lieu of high cash bail. This meant that people were locked up in pretrial detention and can neither pay any bail or be released. This reform has failed to meaningfully reduce PG's jail population as "no bail" holds outpaced release on recognizance rates

The takeaway? That this reform only affected a tiny piece of the prison system and the system's cruelty adjusted accordingly. W/o reforming pretrial detention, the prevalence of misdemeanor charges, and the joke that is bail hearings, everything just went along without a hitch

I also believes this highlights how people on the outside are not equipped to determine what is a necessary non-reformist reform without the input from criminalized and incarcerated people themselves

But really the only true way to "reform" the system is abolition. Nothing less.

The first tweet in this thread should read "reformist reforms" not "non-reformist reforms". This is what happens when you change your point midway through and don't take the time to edit

The parenthetical part should also be removed. This is twitter editing. I'm an editor