Abstract
Thomas Mathiesen’s theories, his activism and his scholarship are needed, important and useful for contemporary researchers concerned with social change and social justice. At this moment in time, when strong social movements and abolitionism are back on the agenda, Mathiesen’s theories can not only be revitalised, but moved forward in the everlasting unfinished fashion. Mathiesen’s work might be of support to researchers and activists confronted with the ‘system members’ as he calls them, to identify the structures of power one is up against and its strategies. His work provides a roadmap of how to handle repressive powers to reach the long-term goal of penal abolition. In this article, I will outline Mathiesen’s central theories of penal abolition as they are connected to political activism, then trace the role of the police in his abolitionism and, finally, I will argue for the relevance and development of Mathiesen’s abolitionist thinking in the contemporary and burgeoning field of transformative justice and police abolitionism. I aim to show the continuing relevance of Mathiesen’s theories for contemporary abolitionist movements and scholarship, and how they contribute to push these theories forward into new areas.
Introduction
Thomas Mathiesen (1933–2021) was a professor for decades at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo, where he was central to my development as a scholar. Mathiesen was a great inspiration through his writings, his lectures and the many conversations in the corridors and at lunch breaks – and at the annual conferences organised by the Norwegian Association for Penal Reform (KROM) held on a Norwegian mountaintop in midwinter. Already, before becoming a student, I had realised Mathiesen’s importance for the international penal abolitionist movement. This was at the conference Riv Murarna (tear down the walls) in Stockholm in 2000. Mathiesen was at the conference, as was the US scholar, abolitionist and civil rights activist Angela Y. Davis. She expressed the importance of Mathiesen’s theories for her work and her excitement at being at the same conference as him. I understood then how Mathiesen was not only a local professor and public scholar in Oslo, but a central figure for the international abolitionist movement. This is something I will pursue in this article: how Mathiesen’s local experiences and theory building in Norway are tied to contemporary international social movements. I would like to take this chance to reflect on the importance of his theories for researchers and activists working towards social justice and against structural and institutional violence. I will address how Mathiesen’s insights can be inspiring and guiding for new generations of abolitionist researchers and activists, and his theories’ relevance for central issues of contemporary penal abolition, transformative justice and police abolition, even though Mathiesen did not address the latter two directly. As he explains, Mathiesen’s theories form important guidance in understanding political repression as well as how to organise against it (Mathiesen, 1978).
Globally, we have seen a steady increase in the prison population from at least the 1980s onwards, a continuation of police brutality and a political contest of being the toughest on crime. As contemporary carceral and oppressive politics and practices are at a record high, I believe it is more important than ever to support, form and strengthen counter power against these trends for the sake of social justice. At the same time, counter powers are growing stronger and are more active than in a long time, as we saw with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and in police and general penal abolition initiatives following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020,1 which instigated the largest protest movement seen in the US since the civil rights movements of the 1960s (Shanahan and Kurti, 2022). The protests and the revitalisation of penal abolition spread to Europe, including Scandinavia (Mana, 2021; Orupabo, 2021), as well as to abolitionist research.2
Reflecting on Mathiesen’s insights can be inspiring and guiding for new generations of abolitionist researchers and activists. This article is an effort to contribute to these movements by reengaging with the ideas of Mathiesen. Another aim of this article is that even though Mathiesen did not directly address police abolition nor transformative justice, the foundational ideas, politics and theories are present in Mathiesen’s writing, and I want to tease them out and present their utility for these movements. The central abolitionist theories of Mathiesen, I will claim, can even contribute to strengthening these movements and their political efforts. Through this, I will furthermore try to bridge the Scandinavian and Anglo-American abolitionist theories and practices. This article aspires to be part of a growing effort to revitalise the abolitionist classics for a new generation of activist and scholars (see, for example, Piché, 2023), and contribute to an awareness of the long European abolitionist tradition.
Inspired by Mathiesen’s theorem of always relating activism and theory, in the following I will outline his central theories of penal abolition as they are connected to political activism. I will furthermore trace the role of the police in his theories. Finally, I will use this to establish the relevance of Mathiesen’s abolitionist thinking in the contemporary and burgeoning field of transformative justice and police abolition.
Thomas Mathiesen’s action theories for penal abolition
Instead of trying to give a systematic description, I am trying to describe the visible fragments of disciplining in social life. And I try to describe the disciplining in the way my own thinking has developed around this problem. It is only in later work that I should be able to present a more systematic description. The articles in this book are thus working documents on the way to such a systematic approach. (Mathiesen, 1978: 31)4
In the following, I will portray what Mathiesen described as his most important activist activities and relate them to, and put into context, four central theoretical concepts for Mathiesen’s penal abolitionism; the unfinished; the two contrasting forms of power – silent silencing and counter power; and alternative public space.
The unfinished: the Norwegian Association for Penal Reform (KROM)
Mathiesen’s activist engagement was primarily channelled through KROM. In 1968 he participated in founding this penal abolitionist organisation, which today describes itself as ‘an association without political and religious affiliations working for a humane criminal policy. KROM works to abolish the reaction system in its current form and to prevent the development of new and prison-like systems or coercive schemes’.5 Over the years KROM has been an important counter power and a critical voice in the public debate on penal policy in Norway. KROM has organised regular teach-ins, published a newsletter (KROM-News) with contributions by and distribution to prisoners and other interested parties, written consultation papers to the government, newspaper articles and books; and, not least, KROM has organised a yearly conference on a Norwegian mountaintop in midwinter since the organisation’s inception (Mathiesen, 2015). The conference, as an alternative public space, has been of central importance in keeping the organisation alive, and for a continuous critical debate about penal policy in Norway. Part of the importance of this conference is that it brings together different actors with an interest or stake in penal policy: lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats, social workers, activists, researchers, students, prison staff and prisoners. The latter have a permanent place at the board of KROM, and can be granted leave from prisons to participate at the conference and board meetings. Prisoners’ voices are particularly important for KROM and the conferences (Mathiesen, 1974; 2017).
According to Mathiesen (2015: 31), ‘abolitionism is a stance’. It is the opposite of system justification, and it is the opposite of refining the existing. Prison abolition is a long-term goal, while the short-term goal of negating the system’s damaging effects through reform must have an abolitionist stance. Such reforms must be negative, ‘negating the basic prison structures’ (Mathiesen, 1986: 82), as opposed to positive reforms which expand or improve the system so that it works more efficiently (Mathiesen, 1992). Examples of negative reforms can be reduction of pre-trial detention, abolition of communication censorship in prisons (Mathiesen, 1974), or extended leaves and visits which make prisons more open (Mathiesen, 1986). Welfare reforms can be of an abolitionist kind when they are emancipatory and part of making cracks in control regimes.6 Short-term reformist goals are utilised for long-term structural change. Short and long-term goals are limited if they are not combined. Abolitionist reforms must have the character of competing contradictions, as Mathiesen explains (1971; 1992; 2015). To be a real alternative, they must contradict the old established system. The alternative must be new and foreign to the established system, not just reforming the old one; this is contradiction. But it must also be able to compete with the old system. To be able to compete, the alternative cannot be a ‘fully formed entity’. If the outcome of the alternative is already clarified, it will be irrelevant to the members of the old system, and risks being defined out as not relevant, ignored, stamped as extremist. To be able to compete, for the messenger not to be excluded from political discussions (defined out) as irrelevant or extremist, the further consequences of the alternative must be presented as indeterminate and of relevance, by showing the inadequacy of the current system, to ‘the system members’. KROM’s strategy was to make it impossible to define the organisation as either a silent partner or as extremists – both would have neutralised the movement. Therefore, to lay the basis for abolition, large parts of KROM’s work have been dedicated to ‘unmask[ing] the ideologies and the myths which the punitive system relies on’ (Mathiesen, 2015: 139) and, based on that, presenting a real alternative of competing contradiction. Competing contradiction can be explained by the following ideal typical figure (Mathiesen, 2015: 51) (Figure 1).
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The forces pulling away from the unfinished
Citation: Justice, Power and Resistance 7, 2; 10.1332/26352338Y2024D000000018
Source: Mathiesen, 2015.The figure shows how a real alternative – a competing contradiction – must both be foreign to the system and an implied alternative, not a fully formed idea of the endpoint (for example, crafting a totally new system that should replace prisons). In the process of changing the system, the social structure will necessarily change, meaning that an alternative that is fully formed from the outset is not possible to realise (Mathiesen, 1992). A real alternative must resist pulls from the non-competing contradiction, where the alternative will be defined as irrelevant and extremist, and it must resist pulls from a competing agreement, where the alternative is co-opted by the system and will be used to legitimate and strengthen the current system (as illustrated by the arrows in Figure 1).
Short and long-term goals, an abolitionist stance and competing contradiction are central parts of Mathiesen’s theory of the unfinished. KROM’s strategy can be defined as unfinished, with short-term goals of negative reforms (competing) combined with long-term goals of penal abolition (contradiction) as a way to reach real alternatives. Mathiesen (1986: 81) describes how a real alternative must ‘be contained in a state of permanent, unfinished revolution, or at least in a matrix of social relationships which were constantly evolving’. The fully formed integrated alternative, ‘planned and designed ahead of time’, will necessarily become part of the prison structure. And the false alternatives to prison (competing agreement) become add-ons rather than alternatives, such as community service orders or halfway houses (Mathiesen, 1986). The unfinished alternatives are those that evolve from a carefully worked out strategy. An operationalisation of a competing contradiction is the combination of short and long-term goals (Mathiesen, 1986: 82). As such, the unfinished is a combination of reform and revolution. This combination is a main strength of the unfinished. It is very difficult to categorise this form of resistance, which makes it harder to repress, as Mathisen experienced time and again in his work with KROM. Being a reformist, one is invited in to political discussions, and, being a revolutionary, one can keep the main goal of structural change.
Silently silenced and counter power: the Alta conflict and the mass action of the police
The Alta conflict of the 1970s and early 1980s concerned the development of a construction road cutting across indigenous lands and a dam for hydroelectric power which would flood vast areas of this land, including a Sámi village, fishing rivers and reindeer grazing areas, in northern Norway. In addition to local Sámi activists, thousands of activists from across the country travelled to the North to protest. Among them was Thomas Mathiesen, an experience he outlined in Civil Disobedience at 70° North (Mathiesen, 1983) and in his autobiography (Mathiesen, 2017). An outcome of this experience for Mathiesen was attention given to how a late capitalist society endangers the ‘the very physical foundation of existence for groups in society’ (Mathiesen, 1983: 5) and, from this, the importance for social movements to consider how a broader spectrum of political issues are interrelated and to unify various interests. Another important lesson from the Alta conflict was the corrosive threats social movements are facing, and how to counter these threats. This insight can be found in the theory of silent silencing, where a central point is how ethical and political questions are silenced by a capture by the legal realm. Mathiesen calls this capture ‘legalisation’ (that is, juridification). The Alta conflict was suppressed by a transformation of the moral and political questions into legal ones, and the central battles ended up, and were lost, in the courtroom. Later, Mathiesen (2001) wrote about additional alarming trends – if the post-9/11 terrorism legislation had been in place at the time of the Alta conflict, the protests could have been subsumed as acts of terrorism, underlining how the legal system not only redefines political questions as questions of law, but how political activism is blocked through criminalisation.
The theory of silently silenced (Mathiesen, 2004) outlines forms of reaction from powerful systems when being challenged, which aim to silence and suppress critique that takes a structural or systemic form. Silent silencing has five central characteristics, which position this form of power in contrast to physical power: (1) it is structural, so that no one is directly responsible; (2) it is part of everyday life, so that it is unavoidable; (3) it is difficult to define its limits, which makes it effective; (4) it is not noisy, which makes it easier to legitimise; and (5) it has a dynamic character, so that it becomes trustable (Mathiesen, 1978: 30). These disciplinary techniques are difficult to pin down, to point to who is exercising them, and to their limits and direct effects. All this makes it vastly difficult to mobilise against, making the techniques very powerful for suppressing critique.
Concretising these techniques, silent silencing is a practice that includes absorption, system placement, professionalisation, legalisation and masking (Mathiesen, 1978: 30). An example of absorption is non-coercive penal reforms instigated by the criminal legal system, as a response to critique against the system, but that turns out to be as disciplining as imprisonment, as in the case of positive reforms discussed earlier. Positive reforms can also be an example of masking: prison-like systems and their disciplinary functions are masked by changing form and given other names. The fundamental critique has been captured and integrated in the system in a way that makes it non-threatening to the system, and in a way that promotes the prevailing interests of the system. Using the law to solve political contestations is an example of silencing of political dissent through legalisation, as discussed above. System placement and professionalisation describes processes when those who resist the system end up paralysed through capture by everyday order – working hard to get the pay slip to pay the loans, being loyal to get a promotion and so on. Professionalisation describes similar processes but where people are trained in certain professions such as law, learning the language and structure of law, which is transformed into common sense. The fear of losing privileges and the naturalisation of the system paralyses the capacity to resist it. Mathiesen (1978) reminds us that the silent form of disciplining does not mean that physically violent disciplining is diminishing. They are both strong, but the latter is aimed at marginalised groups and political conflict. It does not affect the majority’s everyday life and, as such, protests against physical violence do not receive wide support. In this way, both forms of disciplining can continue unaffected, resistance becomes paralysed and the present social order can continue unaffected.
While the theory of silent silencing is a tool for understanding political repression, counter power is an action theory for organising against repression (Mathiesen, 1978). This theory came into use during the 1980s mass actions of the police, describing the police’s use of techniques such as arbitrary mass arrests, fines, remand, sentencing, imprisonment, violence and physical persecution (Mathiesen, 2017: 265). Mathiesen witnessed these techniques firsthand in the Oslo police’s violent and repressive behaviour towards a leftwing activist movement called Blitz (Mathiesen, 1989; 2017). At various protests, the activists were sprayed with CS gas. On one occasion, the police stormed a fully-seated restaurant with dogs (which led to the later infamous statement from the chief of police that they used dogs because it was not possible to enter with horses). On other occasions, sitting protesters were run over by police horses, and batons were regularly used to beat protesters. This was followed by arrests and imprisonment. It was common to use the anti-terror squad against the activists on these occasions (Mathiesen, 1989; 2017). These observations made Mathiesen acutely aware of the criminalisation of political protests and the resistance by activists. This played a role in the development of the theory of counter power, which centres on collective action.
The theory of counter power was first developed based on Mathisen’s activist experiences in KROM. A central point is that power is dependent on powerlessness, understood as passivity and repetition of the familiar, due to a lack of knowledge of alternatives, of own interests and of reasons for problems. Because power is dependent it can also be challenged, by addressing powerlessness (Mathiesen, 1992). Therefore, it is in the interest of power to keep people in a powerless position, and silent silencing is a means of doing just that. Getting out of a situation of powerlessness, however, is dependent on collective action, and that is exactly what counter power is: ‘The collective action, which is counter power, comes instead of powerlessness, replaces it so to speak, whereby power is challenged’ (Mathiesen, 1992: 68). The examples provided – KROM, Alta, activist resistance – are examples of collective action that engages people, that takes them out of a position of passivity and collectively builds knowledge about alternatives, own interests and reasons for problems. As such, counter power can be utilised both against silent silencing, although it takes a greater effort to identify it and unmask its strategies, and against power in the form of physical violence.
Alternative public space: Schengen and an EU summit
Creating alternative public space is an important part of counter power. The following two examples of collective action played incremental parts in developing Mathiesen’s theoretical perspectives.
According to Mathiesen (2017: 248), apart from KROM and penal policy, the fight against the Schengen Agreement was one of his most important struggles. The vast surveillance capacity, potential political surveillance, and the closed borders of Schengen (Fortress Europe) were the reasons for the significance of this struggle (Mathiesen, 1997). The theory of counter power was advanced and put into use in the analysis of and resistance against the Schengen expansion with the concept of alternative public space (Mathiesen, 2000). This is a resistance strategy through emancipation from the absorbing power of the mass media, a recovery of the sense of an intrinsic value of grassroot movements, and a recovery of the sense of duty among intellectuals, with a goal of creating alternative public space – a network of information and opinions driven by argumentation, systematic critique and principled thinking – and by challenging the dominance of mass media. This would have the potential to exercise significant pressure on the political system (Mathiesen, 2000).
Connected to the work against Schengen was Mathiesen’s experience during the EU summit in Gothenburg in 2001, which he wrote about in his autobiography (Mathiesen, 2017) and in a magazine published together with activists who partook in the protests against the summit (Mathiesen, 2001). The summit later received much attention due to the extraordinary use of police force (for example, Björk and Peterson, 2002). I was myself in Gothenburg during the EU summit, together with tens of thousands of protesters, and experienced firsthand this excessive use of police force. The night before the protests started, I slept with other protesters in a school designated for accommodation by the organisers. We woke up to a school area completely encircled by containers put in place by the police during the early morning hours. It was almost impossible to leave the school area, and many were arrested trying, myself included. Those who did not manage to flee were arrested when the police stormed the school area.7 I was placed in a bus together with other arrestees where I sat for hours before being moved to a migration detention centre. From there other detainees and I were taken to an airport and shipped to Oslo in a small military airplane, in handcuffs and accompanied by one police officer per detainee. About 1000 other protesters were arrested, 177 persons deported, and three persons shot by the police during the summit (Mathiesen, 2001; 2017). What alarmed Mathiesen about the events unfolding during the summit, and other similar protests at the time, was an increasing criminalisation of political manifestations, or, as he writes, a redefinition and conversion of politics into crime. This could be seen in post-9/11 terrorism legislation in Europe, in the violent policing of protests, in courts and in the Schengen agreement and its surveillance system SIS. These events contributed to the further development of Mathiesen’s theory of counter power – putting forward suggestions on how to resist the criminalisation of political dissent. Mathiesen ((Mathiesen, 2001; 2017) maintained that protesters must form a counter narrative of the events, and the efforts to silence political activism through criminalisation, by sharing experiences in an alternative public space.
According to Mathiesen, ‘the development of an alternative public sphere, utilising the political and social networks which people are engaged in, and emphasising criteria of importance and participation within that sphere, cannot be emphasised too strongly’ (Mathiesen, 1986: 85). For an alternative public space in penal policy, three components need to be in place (Mathiesen, 2015: 28–29): (1) liberation from the mass media and the idea that events are irrelevant if mass media are not addressing them; one should say no to participating in mass media debates, which make one nothing more than a clown on a stage for the sake of entertainment; (2) redeem self-esteem and feeling of worth in grassroot organisations, by countering the claims from mass media that the grassroots have died out; and (3) responsibilisation of intellectuals to take part in grassroot organisations. Mathiesen uses KROM’s yearly conferences as an example of how this can be done, the creation of a space where networks of information are created across various segments of the population, based on relationships. An alternative public space is not to compete with the mass media, but to strengthen and be a resource for political communities. The theories of an alternative public space were developed before the internet got the position it has today, so Mathiesen did not develop the theory in relation to what effects the internet might have, for good or for bad, on an alternative public space, although he does mention it. In the introduction to The Politics of Abolition Revisited (Mathiesen, 2015), he also revisits the term, adding that ‘The Internet and the modern mass media in general, with millions of participants all over the world, seem to create a confusing and loose public sphere that may sometimes be helpful and sometimes not. There are examples of both possibilities’ (Mathiesen: 2015: 30). The successful organisation of the Arab Spring through social media is mentioned as an example of the former, while unplanned and confusing information exchange is used as an example of the latter (Mathiesen: 2015). Mathiesen unfortunately did not expand on these observations, something that could have included the damaging and silencing effects of harm and hate speech that social media brings about, and how that is systematically put in practice by algorithms, nor the vast possibilities of surveillance of political dissent that the internet brings about. On the hopeful side, the potential of a manifold of global critical public spaces with fast information exchange of political thought, activities, victories, struggles and so on are brought about by the internet and social media, and, along with that, possible strengthened communities and networks of political and social support.
As mentioned, Mathiesen was greatly concerned about the police and the growing powers of the police, although he never formulated a concrete police abolitionism. In Prison on Trial (Mathiesen, 2006), however, the malfunctioning police body plays a central role in his arguments about the futility of the current penal system. He presented a stark criticism of the left realist critical criminologists for their reformist ideas about how to change the police. Based on their analysis of the social causation of crime, they suggested a reformed and socialist sympathetic police force. This, Mathiesen argued, will only result in strengthened social control of those already exposed to the control system based on their social standing, like the idea of community policing. The left realists did not argue for social measures to address social ills, as one would expect, but rather more police and control (Mathiesen, 2006: 152). I will go more into details about Mathiesen’s writing about the police to clarify how the police can be positioned in relation to his theories on penal abolition.
Mathiesen’s concern about the police
The development of control and surveillance regimes was the primary source of Mathiesen’s interest in the police and their practices. The police figure in several of Mathiesen’s publications and are the main issue in three of his texts. In 1979 he published The Police War [Politikrigen], in 1988 the book chapter On Dangerous Research: The Fate of a Study of the Police in Norway, and in 1989 he co-edited the anthology Power and Baton: Searchlight on the Police [Makt og langkølle: Søkelys på politiet] (Heiberg et al, 1989). Democratic oversight and control of the police was of great concern to Mathiesen. In his 1988 book chapter, he states that when talking about prevention and intervention one should pay attention to policies geared upwards – the prevention and intervention of harms conducted by those in power and authority; here meaning the crimes committed by the police.
Mathiesen’s interest in the police as part of the development of new control and surveillance regimes was probably inspired by the Berkeley criminologists,8 or at least tied into contemporary concerns within the field at that time (for example, Cohen, 1985). Mathiesen (1980) shared the criticism of policing with the Berkeley criminologists who developed the idea of the iron fist and the velvet glove (Crime and Social Justice Associates, 1983): At the same time the police are gaining increasing resources and power (the iron fist), as was understood to be the case for Norway as well, they are developing models of soft policing (the velvet glove), such as community policing. According to Mathiesen (1980), and as pointed out by the Berkeley criminologists, the effect of this bifurcation will be a general expansion of formal control, new powerful and widened tools for control. The ‘velvet glove’ is inherently dependent on the ‘iron fist’, in addition to working as a legitimisation of and a support for the ‘iron fist’ of the police, which leads to a general expansion of the police, its reach and control potential. The main problem is integral to the structure of the police and its democratic deficit, according to Mathiesen. When implementing ‘soft policing’, it is still ‘the police who exercise control over people, while people’s possibility to exercise democratic control of the police exists only on a theoretical level’ (Mathiesen, 1980: 82). The disparity in power between the police and the policed is too big. The political effort towards this development is thus to try to disclose and counteract a development of the iron fist and velvet glove operational logics.
The development of Mathiesen’s police critique was from the outset tightly connected to the critique of, and struggles against, the Vagrancy Act, which entailed carte blanche police control of, and forced labour camps for, socially marginalised (mostly) men (Mathiesen, 1975). This law was finally abandoned in 1970 after massive protests, which Mathiesen was a central part of. As a result of the experiences gained during the struggles against the Vagrancy Act, Mathiesen wrote The Police War with an aim to ‘provide collected experiences for those who want to work politically against the contemporary development of the police in the Norwegian society’ (Mathiesen, 1979: 7). Mathiesen countered the claim made by politicians at that time, that the police were ‘decentralised and with a civil character’ and calls this an ideology, an ideology with the purpose of concealing the actual development of the police. The development Mathiesen warned about was a centralisation and militarisation of the police – in the form of a paramilitary anti-terror task force within the police. Importantly, and back to the velvet glove, Mathiesen regarded the intensification of the softer side of the police, like community policing, as alarming as the militarisation of the police – it is a way of hiding the visible signs of the violence of the state apparatus of violence, and it is a way of absorbing the critique of this apparatus, while the control and disciplining potential of the apparatus is as effective as before or even strengthened. The critique against the police at that time was a critique of a strengthened police, both the soft and the hard side of the police, understood as a new mesh of forms of control outside the prison, with the effect that society becomes increasingly more prison-like (Mathiesen, 1979).
This was the 1970s, and the criticism and discussion about the police had a foundation in the struggles over the Vagrancy Act, and Mathiesen indeed concludes the book with: ‘a phase in the police war has now ended. It should be noted a phase, the police war is something that obviously has not found its end’ (Mathiesen, 1979: 141, italics in original). True enough, the 1980s came with a new phase, and new and fierce debates about the police reached the headlines and the interest of Mathiesen – debates about police violence and policing of political dissent. This new phase started with the uncovering of extensive police violence towards socially marginalised men in Bergen, the second biggest city in Norway (Mathiesen, 1988), continued with debates about police violence towards activists and political protest movements (Heiberg et al, 1989; Mathiesen, 2001), and led to a broader critique of the expansion of surveillance and police cooperation in the Schengen Agreement (Mathiesen, 1997; 2017).
Mathiesen’s (1988) interest in the police violence case in Bergen concerned the possibility of conducting research on the police, and particularly the lack of popular control of the police and the force’s reaction to pressure and critique. In the Bergen case, two researchers who wrote a report about violence in general stumbled upon widespread police violence. When the report received public attention, the researchers were classified as liars by the national press and the police, and an investigating committee was appointed by the ministry of justice. The committee reached the same conclusion as the researchers (Bratholm, 1986). The situation escalated when the Bergen police force targeted the researchers physically, harassed and persecuted them. The researchers were arrested and charged with contribution to false witness statements, and several of the police violence victims were charged with false testimony. The police were freed of all charges of violence (Mathiesen, 1988). A main concern of Mathiesen’s was that the state investigated itself, and, importantly, the legalisation of political cases when the state is a party to the case. The case transformed into a juridical problem (cf. silently silenced). In this case, since it could not be legally proved that the police had conducted violence, the general societal conclusion and sentiment was that the police had not conducted violence. Mathiesen criticised the lack of democratic oversight and control with the police institution, and the belief that those systems and mechanisms that constitute the problem can also solve the problem: ‘It is as if we, as critics, do not understand and see the full importance of what we are criticising, thus calling on page 2 upon the control institution whose limitations as a truth-finding instrument we have criticised on page 1’ (Mathiesen, 1988: 284). Mathiesen worried about how such processes, when the state counteracts and neutralises criticism, will scare researchers and others from criticising the police and investigate state crime: ‘Who will now dare to criticise police infringement and violence?’ (Mathiesen, 1988: 284). This showcases Mathiesen’s main concern when it comes to the police – not necessarily the police institution as such (as was the case for prisons) but the lack of oversight and control with the police, its increasing power, militarism, its vulnerable or political targets and how this contributes to making society prison-like.
The critical analysis of the police finds a solution in a democratisation of the police, increased transparency and more control of the police, with a goal of changing and creating a stability in police behaviour, to ‘stop the police from doing whatever they want’ (Mathiesen, 1989: 178). This form of critique can be understood as reformist, something that will ultimately serve as a legitimisation of the police institution and the cooptation of its critiques. Alternatively, Mathiesen’s call for increased control of the police can be understood as a short-term negative reform with an abolitionist stance. Regarding the missing possible long-term goal of police abolition, Mathiesen might have been aware of the shortcomings of his perspective on the police. In Heiberg et al (1989: 212), the editors conclude with: ‘We have not stretched our imagination far enough to find effective forms of non-parliamentary expression of a radical police critique’. Maybe this was meant to be a beginning of a long-term goal, of further reimagining policing and its alternatives. With this as a starting point, I will move to a discussion of how Mathiesen’s theories align with transformative justice and, as part of that, police abolition.
Transformative justice and police abolition through Mathiesen’s theoretical toolbox
The theory of the unfinished and adjacent theories can be a resource for contemporary penal abolitionist movements and scholarship, at the same time as these movements and scholarship further Mathiesen’s perspectives by making them relevant to new areas. I will further explain this, particularly as it relates to the broader context of transformative justice – including police abolition – in the spirit of Mathiesen always relating theory to praxis. But first, some words about transformative justice and its embedded police abolition are needed.
Transformative justice and police abolition
The transformative justice movement formed in the US is an abolitionist scholarly and activist reaction to structural discrimination and harm, penal excess and police violence towards the population of colour and poor neighborhoods. This movement draws inspiration from their own experiences of community organising, but also from transformative justice traditions and practices across the world. Transformative justice has been practised for centuries in indigenous communities all over the world (Morris, 2000), and is today part of building new visionary communities on a large scale, such as in Rojava (Kakaee, 2000) and in Chiapas (Rebrii, 2000). Part of the US transformative justice movement rejects state law and institutions from a belief that it is not possible to bring justice from the intrinsic discrimination and inequality built into law and capitalism (Kim, 2021). Approaches that try to find solutions to inequality within law cannot escape framing structural problems in individualistic terms. Individualistic solutions close off understanding and addressing violence emanating from oppressive social structures (Davis et al, 2022). Transformative justice understands injustices and discrimination not as something that can find solutions through law, but as something that yields broader societal solutions of structural change, starting in communities. By building strong communities, and active engagement in these, beyond state institutions, transformative justice identifies and acts upon injustices, at the same time as providing new visions of justice by addressing structural and institutional harms, such as those stemming from class, gender and racial inequality. Justice can best be addressed by processes of accountability, care, support and intervention, by creating institutions and responses to harm within communities (Kim, 2021). An important question is how we may trust communities to know what is just and righteous and to have good solutions and not develop into a force reproducing already established relations of power. Transformative justice activists and scholars, such as Palacios (2016), refuse a naïve vision of community: ‘I refuse to work with anti-violence activists who erroneously fetishise community as if it were inherently benevolent or otherwise non-oppressive. Their naïveté is irresponsible and downright dangerous’ (Palacios, 2016: 98). Transformative justice requires working against the ‘romance of community’, and steadily building capacity to be able to address multiple and interlocking forms of violence. It requires hard work and organisational capacity (Palacios, 2016: 98).
Transformative justice movements have intersectional perspectives at the core of their struggles, and many grew out of feminist movements and/or scholars (for example, INCITE!, TGI Justice Project, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Dignity and Power Now, Audre Lorde Project,9 and many others (see Davis et al, 2022)). In 2020, 47 antiviolence coalitions signed a letter called The Moment of Truth, addressing the failures of the main-stream antiviolence movements in their reliance on the criminal legal system. The letter insisted that ‘feminist goals are not possible without abolition’ (Davis et al, 2022: 95), and that the antiviolence movements had ignored the central importance of transformative justice’s ‘approaches to healing, accountability, and repair, approaches created by BIPOC leaders and used successfully in BIPOC communities’ (Davis et al, 2022: 96). Abolition and feminism are indivisible, and transformative justice is the vehicle to address this (Davis et al, 2022: 96).
An agenda important for the transformative justice movement is to keep communities safe from the police and the violence they bring with them by creating viable alternatives to the police, and by unlearning the need for the police – ‘to reduce the reasons why people think they need the police’ (Purnell, 2021: 126). Cullors (2019) and Palacios (2016) bring lived examples on how to address abolition through transformative justice, and how it not only requires material changes but also an unlearning of all we have been socialised into believing about the criminal legal system, or possibly vigilantism, as a solution to harm. Palacios describes her path to unlearning that justice and accountability equate with vengeance and punishment, and transforming that learnt reflex into ‘a transformative justice feminist praxis… driven by the formation of radical, oppositional models of justice, redress, and response – namely the creation of transformative systems of accountability’ (Palacios, 2016: 94).
Significantly, transformative justice movements are impatient movements, in a way that enables them to move beyond reform and revolution (cf. Mathiesen, 1986). They want and are doing something here and now. They start where it is possible now, building communities, strengthening communities, implementing social justice alternatives within communities and, in collaboration with radical abolitionist thinkers and scholars, combining the mutual utilisation of theory and praxis.
Mathiesen’s theories and transformative praxis
There are vast similarities between transformative justice movements and Mathiesen’s action theories for penal abolition. Many of Mathiesen’s principles and strategies are already put into practice and developed for contexts that Mathiesen did not address, while Mathiesen’s action theories can still contribute by providing robust theoretical underpinnings for contemporary abolitionist movements and scholarship.
Let us start with Mathiesen’s theory of the unfinished, and the central concept of competing contradiction, by using the concrete example of the US #8toAbolition and #8cantwait campaigns. The police abolitionist campaign #8toAbolition 10 was formed as an abolitionist strategy calling for ‘a world without prisons or police where we can all be safe’, through eight demands: defund the police; demilitarise communities; remove police from schools; free people from prisons and jails; repeal laws criminalising survival; invest in community self-governance; provide safe housing for everyone; invest in care, not cops. The #8toAbolition was originally a reaction to the #8cantwait 11 campaign with its eight demands: ban chokeholds and strangleholds; require de-escalation; require warning before deadly force; exhaust all alternatives before deadly force; duty to intervene; ban shooting at moving vehicles; require use of force continuum; require comprehensive reporting.
From an abolitionist point of view #8toAbolition’s negative reaction to the #8cantwait is evident. Following Mathiesen’s (1992) abolitionist theories of the unfinished, the #8cantwait does not present a real alternative, but rather suggests positive reforms. It is competing with, but it is not a contradiction (see Figure 1) to, the current system. The #8cantwait formed its demands within the existing system, the system that embodies the problem of violence it aims to stop. As such, its demands are not able to achieve what is needed for real change, making it impossible for this campaign to address causes of police violence such as structural racism and oppression. Positive reforms like those of #8cantwait contribute to legitimising the soft side of policing. Following Mathiesen (1980), the soft and hard sides of policing are dependent on each other, and the effect of such a bifurcation is an expansion of the state apparatus of violence, its reach, powers and tools. The #8toAbolition, in contrast, has formed a competing contradiction, a real alternative. The alternatives it suggests are not part of the current system, and will work to weaken the system if implemented. At the same time, the campaign does not present a fully-formed alternative, of some new structures (instead of police) or an ideal society (for example, communism).
Palacios (2016), in line with this sentiment, outlines a similar strategy to the one we can find in the #8toAbolition campaign – transformative justice must be a praxis or a process, rather than something fully formed. It is a praxis that ‘rejects final solutions and ideological purity’ (Palacios, 2016: 95). Real alternatives suggest concrete reforms that negate the system and which in effect will weaken the current criminal legal system, and particularly state violence. The #8toAbolition campaign establishes short-term goals that are of relevance for the long-term goal of penal abolition. It is an unfinished alternative which manages to combine short and long-term goals, thus avoiding being excluded from the political discussion (defined out) as irrelevant or being co-opted by the system, as will be the case with the #8Cantwait campaign.
Another example of a short-term initiative with a long-term goal is co-founder of Black Lives Matter Patrisse Cullors’ (2019) twelve principles for abolition,12 based on her own abolitionist journey and transformative justice engagement. Cullors (2019) points to the importance of combining theory and practice, and further to transforming all aspects of work and life into abolitionist praxis. These twelve principles might look basic at first glance. Taken together, however, and combined with an abolitionist long-term goal, they are powerful and have the potential for transformative change. A conscious conception about short and long-term goals, knowing the value of the basics for larger transformation, can be helpful for motivating the daily struggles in social movements. Mathiesen (1974: 45) writes that ‘short-term reforms that also have revolutionary or boundary-transcending potential’, and that satisfy needs and point beyond the existing structures, are truly abolitionist. This is a vision in line with transformative justice.
These examples point to a process, they embrace abolition as process. Penal abolition does not have an endpoint. In Mathiesen’s (1992) concept of the unfinished it is the emancipatory process that is important. What Mathiesen’s theory of the unfinished brings to the table here is thus the importance of resisting the urge and demand to formulate a fully-formed alternative, and to resist the pull to help improve the system by formulating reforms within the system. Furthermore, short-term goals are to be utilised for long-term structural change. Short and long-term goals must be combined for any of them to be effective. It is in the combination that reforms have the potential for broader structural change (Mathiesen 1992; 2015).
… feminist efforts to effectively address (in particular) violence against women and girls are subsumed into socially and politically powerful structures of criminalisation, many of which detract from feminist agendas and which instead prioritise criminalisation, even though these agendas have failed to prevent, structurally reduce or, indeed, end predominately male abuses. (Pali and Canning, 2022: 70)
To use Mathiesen’s language, carceral feminism is a competing agreement (false alternative) or a non-competing agreement (repetition of the existing). It is as capture of political questions by the legal realm. Critiques are silenced by legalisation, but with no betterment of gender injustices and harms. Transformative justice scholars, such as Cullors, Palacios and Purnell, in contrast, emphasise the importance of reimagining and finding solutions to interpersonal and structural violence outside the legal realm. Being revictimised by the criminal legal system, and finding that vigilantism made more sense, Palacios (2016) realised that she lacked the knowledge to be able to imagine other ways of addressing the sexual violence she had been exposed to. By steadily and collectively building her own capacity and knowledge, she initiated community accountability systems and safe spaces following radical harm-reduction principles. Cullors (2019) writes about similar experiences as Palacios, of being victimised and then revictimised by the criminal legal system and finding collective solutions to harm within community organising. Cullors (2019) points to the importance of unlearning. Palacios (2016), Cullors (2019) and Purnell (2021) all emphasise the critical reimagining aspect of transformation: Cullors’ a new way of being, Purnell’s becoming abolitionist, and Palacios’ being something else. With awareness of the technique of legalisation to capture political issues, reimagining and relearning are avenues to counter it. A controversial issue regarding legalisation is the widespread acquittal of police officers charged with murder in the US and the outrage when this happens, mirroring a belief in using the criminal legal system, which the police are a central part of, to receive justice in these cases. This highlights the fact that the question of police violence is political and structural and cannot be reduced to court cases against individual police officers.
The counter power technique when facing the power of silent silencing, according to Mathiesen (1978; 1992), is collective action. Learning and knowing the strategies of silent silencing are strong fundaments for being able to identify and unmask its strategy of power and for mobilising collective actions to counter it. Collective action is to collectively build knowledge about alternatives, own interest, and identifying reasons for problems. This is at the core of transformative justice movements.
Alternative public space is one of Mathiesen’s (1986; 2015) concrete strategies on how to exercise counter power. Creating alternative public space includes a liberation from the absorbent power of mass media, the refusal to be part of its showbusiness and being able to set the agenda and create networks outside of the popularised agenda. Mathiesen does not suggest that one should withdraw from participating in public debates, neither that one should try to compete with the mass media, but rather that one must participate on one’s own terms and through alternative forums by strengthening alternative political communities. Actions like this will ultimately put pressure on the political agenda and system. Mathiesen placed a central value on grassroot movements’ creation of alternative public space for the achievement of the long-term goal of abolition.
Transformative justice movements are forming and practising within alternative public spaces and showing the strength of this strategy. Widespread activities in transformative justice movements are organising teach-ins and workshops and producing and disseminating toolkits to encourage others to do the same. This strategy also aligns with what is discussed above about reimagining and relearning to counter silent silencing. One example is Critical Resistance’s (CR) workshop on police abolition with a goal ‘to give participants an understanding and historical overview of policing in the US, and to provide abolitionist ways to resist and not rely on the cops in a range of situations’.14 According to CR, hundreds of persons and groups have participated in this workshop, and the outline of the workshop with all necessary materials is available on their website so that anyone can organise it. CR provides several other workshops and toolkits, such as one for police abolition campaigns.15 Transformative justice movements are actively creating alternative public spaces, by educating and informing, and by opening spaces for argumentation and systematic, civilised and principled thinking, all central aspects of Mathiesen’s (2015) alternative public space. Central insights from Mathiesen when participating in public debates are to not fall into the trap of becoming clowns for the mass media, to not participate unless it is part of your own strategy, and to not regard it as a failure if the mass media does not report on your activities.
Concluding notes
Mathiesen’s abolitionism is about the ability to say ‘no’, no to inhumane and oppressive systems and treatment of people. It is to say ‘no’ vociferously, consistently and insistently (Mathiesen, 2015). This is the abolitionist stance – it is concerned with the negative in the meaning of negative reform, reforms which ‘remove greater or smaller parts on which the system in general is more or less dependent’ (Mathiesen, 2015: 223). Davis et al (2022) address how abolitionist movements have often been criticised for simply focusing on what should be negated, what should be dismantled or removed, and not what should come in its place. They refute this claim and point to non-reformist reforms (cf. Mathiesen’s negative reforms) as an example of the real and practical solutions that abolitionism offers – non-reformist reforms ‘that make sustainable and material differences in the lives of people living under the control of oppressive systems’ (Davis et al, 2022: 68).
In 2015 Mathiesen wrote: ‘at least from the 1970s on, I have said that the abolitionist principle is far more difficult to carry to success now than before’ (Mathiesen, 2015: 31). In one sense this is true. Taking a perspective from a Swedish setting (where this is written), this country has probably never been further away from the ideals of abolition. There is currently a political contest in breaking all limits ever seen in the Nordic countries in being tough on crime, with the numbers of police officers, prisoners and criminal laws on a sharp rise. But this is not a reason for despair, for giving up. Mathiesen realised that prison abolition will not occur in our time, but it might ‘be a guiding ideal for the future’ (Mathiesen, 2015: 31). This does not mean that abolitionism should not be acted on today, through academic and activist commitment, and that short-term goals are not reachable. This is obvious in the expanding transformative justice movement.
I believe Mathiesen would have gained new hope and inspiration witnessing the practices and energy of this movement and scholarship. Transformative justice theory and practice strengthen Mathiesen’s theories in an ever-evolving and unfinished fashion. An obvious example is in intersectional approaches. Mathiesen did not discuss issues of gender or race in any substantial way in his theories. Mathiesen’s theories will hopefully continue to be developed by activists and scholars in this unfinished fashion. Mathiesen emphasised the importance of recovering the duty of intellectuals to take a social responsibility for the improvement of society and contributing to movements like transformative justice. Intellectuals have a core role to play in alternative public spaces, and to contribute to the continued development of emancipatory practices through the combination of theory and action. This is an invitation to enter into dialogue with Mathiesen’s theories and to continually develop and put them into practice for the long-term goal of penal abolition and social justice.
Notes
About 600 persons are murdered by the US police yearly, disproportionally the Black population (about 25% of the murders, while comprising about 12% of the population) (Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project, 2024). Some of the most publicised recent murders that have led to massive political protests, uproar and mobilisation have been, besides George Floyd, the murders of Eric Garner (2014), Michael Brown (2014), Laquan McDonald (2014), Tamir Rice (2014), Walter Scott (2015), Freddie Gray (2015), Philando Castile (2016), Jordan Edwards (2017), Breonna Taylor (2020), Andre Hill (2020), Fanta Bility (2021), Daunte Wright (2021), Tyre Nichols (2023), Patrick Lyoya (2022), Keenan Anderson (2023) and Darryl Tyree Williams (2023) (Meadow, 2024).
More than half the entries with the keyword ‘abolition’ in social science publications in Scopus are published after 2020 (597/1019).
This is in stark contrast to contemporary political winds in Nordic academia (especially in Denmark) positing strict boundaries between research and activism (including critical theory), something that has been problematised in the context of freedom of research (see, for example, Danbolt and Ullerup Schmidt, 2021).
All translations from the Norwegian and Swedish are by the author.
Mathiesen (2015) admits that KROM today also works for ‘positive’ prison reforms, reforms that can make a more decent life for prisoners, such as improving health and educational conditions for prisoners, or resist overcrowding and use of isolation cells. Mathiesen changed his earlier view on such reforms – that they lead to a legitimation and solidification of prisons – and argues that prisons thrive with or without humanity, and that prisoners’ rights can negate and challenge the prison system when ‘overstepping the functional requirements of the prison’ in line with Gorz’s non-reformist reforms (Mathiesen, 2015: 24).
The head of police Håkan Jaldung was later charged for unlawful detention but was freed in two court instances.
For an overview of the Berkeley criminologists, see Catello (2023) in this journal.
https://incite-national.org/; https://tgijp.org/; https://srlp.org/; https://dignityandpowernow.org/; https://alp.org/.
‘(1) have courageous conversations; (2) commit to response versus reaction; (3) experiment: nothing is fixed; (4) say yes to one’s imagination; (5) forgive actively versus passively; (6) allow oneself to feel; (7) commit to not harming or abusing others; (8) practice accountability for harm caused; (9) embrace non-reformist reforms; (10) build community; (11) value interpersonal relationships; (12) fight the US state and do not make it stronger’ (Cullors, 2019: 1687).
Although all these techniques are of central relevance here, I will focus on legalisation due to limitation of space.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Tatanya Valland and Per Jørgen Ystehede for the many discussions and insightful comments on this article and the topic in general, Karl Nafstad for proofreading and fruitful feedback, and the two peer reviewers for their valuable comments.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
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