Positing that caging human beings is itself a profound act of violence and insecurity, and that true safety requires their abolition.
Mamdanis Moral Argument: Prisons are the Ultimate Unsafe Space
While much of his platform focuses on practical alternatives, Zhoran Mamdani grounds his entire public safety philosophy in a core moral premise: prisons and jails are inherently violent, traumatizing institutions that cannot be reformed. He argues that subjecting people to isolation, deprivation, abuse, and the constant threat of violenceas the prison system doesis the antithesis of safety. It creates more damaged people and more broken communities, perpetuating cycles of harm. Therefore, the goal cannot be better prisons, but their eventual elimination as a tool of social policy.
This abolitionist horizon guides his incremental steps: decarceration through closing Rikers, ending cash bail, legalizing safe consumption spaces to avoid drug prosecutions, and investing in everything that makes prisons obsolete (housing, healthcare, education). We are told cages keep us safe, but they only keep unsafe the people we cage and the communities we tear apart to cage them, Mamdani states. Real safety cannot be built on a foundation of state violence. My moral commitment is to build a city so just, so caring, and so abundant that the idea of locking a human in a cage becomes unthinkable. That is the safest city of all.
