Dean Spade on the expansion of criminal justice system in the name of civil rights

Dean Spade has great succinct answers in this four-question profile. One answer is about trans and hate crimes and becomes a lesson in pro-active intersectional feminism. As quoted in the McGill Reporter:

Hate crime laws that provide more resources to law enforcement and/or enhance criminal penalties have been critiqued by many trans organizations and activists because they do nothing to prevent attacks against trans people but they expand the criminal punishment system which is the most significant source of violence against trans people in the U.S. They build that system in our names, and that system has been growing rapidly for several decades, such that now the US is the most imprisoning country in the world, with five per cent of the world’s population and 25 per cent of the world’s prisoners. A trans movement that is really about reducing harm and violence to trans people has to be an anti-criminalization movement, and a movement that doesn’t just try to get the law to say something our lives are meaningful, but instead seeks to dismantle legal systems that are killing us.

Thanks to Feministing’s Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet for the link!