Politicians and pundits assert that our criminal justice system—from law enforcement to mass incarceration—are inevitable aspects of society and that there are no viable alternatives. But if we view crime and punishment through the lens of trauma, we begin to see that there are indeed alternatives, and that crime can be prevented before it begins. 

Here’s a simple way to understand how trauma starts and how trauma spreads: A person goes to sit in a chair, but the chair breaks. Perhaps they are embarrassed because someone witnessed their humiliation. The primal part of their brain automatically wants to prevent a similar event, so they begin to fear chairs. They might think twice before they sit in a chair again. Maybe they avoid chairs altogether or let someone else sit in the chair first to ensure it won’t break.

In this instance, the traumatic memory of the event has changed the way the person responds to similar situations.

Now, let’s apply this metaphor to real life. If a young person witnesses one parent being beaten by another parent, then that young person may feel both fearful and helpless. They may even subconsciously say to themselves, “I’m never going to let that happen to me.” As that young person gets older, they may have a fervent desire to acquire a knife or a gun without actually realizing why they have such a strong need to feel protected. 

Trauma reenactment, which is when people repeat behaviors associated with past traumas, may manifest in the form of bullying aimed at their peers. As they spread their trauma onto others, they or their peers may take it out on society. They may rob or otherwise hurt others. They may even harm themselves through cutting, substance abuse, or violent crimes against others. 

When someone hurts others, their victims and the criminal justice system push for them to be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law. This is the real-life contagion of trauma. While we very rarely link such outcomes to the initial traumatic events, this is the way trauma actually works: Hurt people tend to hurt others.

Inequality Causes Trauma

Modern American society is marked by sharp inequalities in income, health access, employment, housing, and education, all of which cause stress and hurt people, and thereby fuel trauma.

We have the means to equalize social strata. Yet too often we choose to spend disproportionate public revenue on reacting to crimes rather than preventing them, enforcing inequality through “tough on crime” policies such as policing, aggressive prosecution, and harsh sentencing. Punishment does not stop the cycle of trauma but worsens and either fuels existing trauma or creates new ones. 

When people suffering from the trauma caused by inequality are violently policed, they suffer even more, their families and communities suffer, and such suffering continues for years, decades, or even generations. When children of the incarcerated grow up without parents around to support them, we contribute to the contagion of trauma. We merely rinse and repeat the cycle of trauma to no end.

It’s no wonder the United States, whose cities invest between one-quarter and one-third of public revenue into policing, subsequently has high levels of incarceration. There are currently more than 1.2 million people confined behind bars around the U.S. About half a million of those are jailed before trial, which means they may be innocent. The trauma such systems inflict can be measured by the level of trauma reenactment in any given society. Yet, we continue to pour limited resources into a system that fails to keep us safe.

What If We Prevent Trauma?

Our current system does little to address the hurt victims of crime suffer. Indeed, victims are not the loudest advocates of policing and mass incarceration and tend to support non-punitive approaches. The Vera Institute found that victims “support rehabilitative over punitive responses to crime” and “prefer state spending on mental health and drug treatment, job creation, and education over spending on prisons and jails.” And “60% of victims prefer shorter prison sentences focused on rehabilitation over longer sentences aimed at incapacitation for extended periods.”

What if, instead of spending huge percentages of our city budgets on policing and prisons, we reduce the source of the traumas that fuel crime and pain? Effective crime mitigation includes job training, higher wages, educational equity, affordable housing, and publicly funded health care, all of which are popular programs that remain poorly funded.

In 2020, when mass public protests against racist policing and violence made connections between city and police budgets, the idea of “defunding the police” became a rallying cry. The political backlash was swift, as politicians equated the idea to an attack on police officers as individuals.

Yet if we envision a fairer world where we aim to prevent traumas before they begin, where people have the collective apparatus to build strong social connections and have their needs met, we can reduce the need for policing and prisons altogether.

Today’s modern-day abolitionist movement—named deliberately to draw parallels with the movement to abolish slavery—could be called trauma abolition, and is centered on investing public dollars into stopping trauma, and therefore crime, before it begins, and divesting from the architecture of trauma contagion, such as violent policing and mass incarceration. It is an idea we need to keep talking about and manifesting. 

On the other side of abolition is a fairer world where there is less need and thus, less violence. In this world, crime and punishment are prevented rather than responded to. Who wouldn’t want to live in such a world?