We realize that a post-carceral world is only fiction with the amount of crimes committed, the amount of laws that are currently set to "rehabilitate" offenders, and the state of mind society already has regarding crime and those who commit them, but we can assume that if this were to become a reality some aspects of American society would have to be reformatted or refitted in order to accomplish such a feat. To have a Post-Carceral world, prisons would have to be eliminated and replaced with assistance programs to truly be able to rehabilitate offenders rather than just throw them into a cell and hope they change. Our governing body would also have to set moral guidelines, or laws, that would give the proper rehabilitation methods for the crimes committed and to make them a priority. Immigration laws would also have to be updated and become more lenient in order to let anyone who wants to be in our country to have an opportunity and not suffer the consequences.
Starting first with prisons. To have a post- carceral world, prisons, jails, and detention centers would have to be omitted as a whole. The go-to plan is always to incarcerate someone convicted of a crime, but in order to have a post-carceral world, new ways to help these people would have to be in place. This in turn would create a void in our society, where nearly 2 million people (Kelly Lytle Hernández, Introduction: Constructing the Carceral State, p. 18) who are currently detained in some sort of fashion, would be on the streets and need to become productive members of society because there would be no carceral structure that they could be sent to.
Secondly, there are still going to be people who break the law. The law is not set in stone, but is not easy to be changed either. The laws in America can be changed, but the process can be multi-faceted and lengthy. First and foremost there are four aspects of the law that would be totally removed; mandatory minimums, three strikes you're out, the War on Drugs, and labeling someone as a felon. By removing these four aspects of the system we can greatly reduce the need to incarcerate individuals, making the goal of living in a prisons-free world a reality. Where should they go or what should become of them? First off, the law would have to be broadened in order to meet the wide spectrum of crimes that are committed in society. There also needs to be attention to the severity of the crimes that are committed. More laws would have to be set in place and more extensions of laws to better clarify them. "Breaking the law" would essentially be left to the governing body, who will continue to be a major part of our country. Their job will be to interpret and establish clearly defined moral codes for all. Each crime would have to be carefully defined and a proper course of rehabilitation would be set in place. Control of the public would still have to be a part of this new world but would have to take shape as actual rehabilitation rather than "...racializing punishment..." , where "...conviction and incarceration rates for African-Americans jumped disproportionately." (Jeffrey Adler, Less Crime, More Punishment: Violence, Race, and Criminal Justice in Early Twentieth-Century America, p. 34).
A post-carceral world would require the implementation of assistance programs such as educational or employment opportunities in order to better help people turn their lives around rather than throwing them into a prison as a first resort. Although many programs are already out in the current prison system, these are mainly on a volunteer basis meaning that if law-abiding citizens do not volunteer to help those who are offenders, then there would be no help for these people. These programs would have to be an integral part of the rehabilitation process and will have to become mandatory. "Many ex-offenders struggle to reintegrate into their communities and face significant challenges in re-entering the job market." (https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice).
By implementing programs to assist offenders, the hope is to provide enough for them to become part of society again. The key here is to try and keep people from continuing on the same path that has led them toward criminal offenses. By doing so, we hope to instill a sense of hope and purpose into those who have done wrong and hope that their judgement becomes clear and have a revelation that what they are doing is causing pain to those around them including their families and children, not just the victims. If they continue to feel like the world is against them with no help from anyone, they will continue to stay on the path that they know best, which will force them to continue a life of crime. "...the [4-year college] program produced dedicated men who left prison and offered their newly acquired knowledge and skills to their communities on the outside." (Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?, p. 59).
In Christopher Adamson's article Punishment after Slavery, he has a somewhat relevant statement regarding rehabilitation and the constant reference to prior criminal activity. He says, " The notion that criminal slaves could be rehabilitated was a contradiction in terms... The ex-slaves were singled out as a threat to the stability of a social order based on white supremacy." (Christopher Adamson, "Punishment after Slavery," p. 564). Of course, slavery is not relevant to our new society since we are past that point in our society, but the portion about constantly referencing to a criminal's past criminal activity, although would still have to account for the degree of rehabilitation they would receive, would have to be omitted from speculations we make about them. This is to avoid a "bias" against criminal offenders when, for example, they are applying to schools or looking for jobs.
Lastly, immigration and deportation would be a lot different. Laws will have to be refitted to allow those who want to come to our country to have the opportunity to do so. Our new post-carceral world would be a more accepting one, where people on work visas can extend their visas without being punished or where non-criminal immigrants can not worry about facing the law for illegally being here. These people all come to the U.S. knowing that it is one of the best in the world and feel as if they can better themselves here. There is no reason we should be looking for them and cause trouble for everyone. "The backward logic of corrections was part of contemporary INS detention from the start: if someone is locked up, then by definition he must be a security threat. Even the absence of danger must be viewed as danger in disguise" (Mark Dow, American Gulag, p. 162). Rather than seeing them as a threat, they will be subject to all of the programs we would have established and have the same opportunities as everyone else. Work programs will be in place to help them find jobs suitable for them or they can receive educational assistance in order to learn the language while having a counselor work with them.