The existing system already fails to address this issue and routinely fails to provide opportunity for rehabilitation to those who are incarcerated inside it. While restorative justice and transformative justice processes can provide further answers and are an important part of the discussion, some abolitionists prefer to look at the big picture.

Instead of focusing on the hypothetical question of what should be done with violent crime perpetrators, they ask how communities can address the underlying issues that are negatively impacting people's lives and create a world in which people are not compelled to make bad decisions in desperate situations.