Tweeting Toward Transformation: Prison Abolition and Criminal Justice Reform in 140 Characters

Abstract

The United States is the world leader in confining bodies behind bars. As scholars, practitioners, and activists struggle against the problem of mass incarceration, this article makes a distinction between two competing perspectives, both of which seek to change the current criminal legal system: "prison abolition" and "reformism." Each represents ideological and political differences in how mass incarceration should and could be resolved. Prior research has relied on historical methods and data to examine theoretical departures between prison reform and prison abolition, yet to our knowledge, there have been no explorations of these perspectives on new media. This article fills the gap, drawing on a sample of 2,112,206 tweets between 2011 and 2020 and engaging in an in-depth qualitative analysis of nearly 5,000 tweets over a 6-year period in order to investigate the ways Twitter users disclose and define their positions on criminal justice reform on one hand, and prison abolition on the other, and how these discussions have changed over time.