They Want Prisons Gone. Then What?

A top Democratic Socialists of America leader admitted on national television that her group wants to abolish prisons, and she could not say what happens to violent criminals once the cells are gone.

Quick Take

DSA national co-chair Megan Romer told Fox News abolishing prisons is part of the group’s “long-term program.”
Romer also confirmed the DSA wants to abolish the Senate, the Electoral College, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
She admitted some people should not be allowed in society, but never named a plan to hold them.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has publicly broken from the DSA on this exact issue, defending prisons and police.
The DSA runs an official “Abolition Working Group,” but its public materials skip over how to handle rapists or killers.

Co-Chair Confirms The Radical Wish List On Live TV

Fox News host Shannon Bream ran through a “true or false” list of DSA goals during a Sunday interview with Romer. Bream asked point blank, “Abolish prisons, at least in large part?” Romer answered, “Yeah, again, that as part of a long-term program, yeah.” She gave the same easy “true” or “absolutely” to abolishing the Senate and ICE.

This was not a slip of the tongue. Romer tied the prison plank to a full platform that also calls for replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court “as we know them.” Conservatives online mocked her for confirming, without hesitation, ideas most Americans would call fringe.

No Answer For Society’s Most Dangerous Criminals

Reporters pressed further on what abolition means for rapists, murderers, and repeat violent offenders. A Deseret News summary of the interview notes Romer acknowledged some people should not be allowed in society for public-safety reasons. But she never named a facility, a process, or a rule for deciding who gets separated from the public, or for how long.

Romer instead said the group would collectively decide what to do with dangerous people and that it “would not look like” today’s prison system. That is not a plan. It is a promise to figure it out later, while the country waits for details on what replaces locked doors for men who commit rape or murder.

An Organization Built Around The Idea, Not The Details

This is not a one-woman opinion. The DSA runs an official “Abolition Working Group” that pushes for “freedom for all incarcerated people.” Local chapters, like Metro DC DSA, publish their own police-abolition resources. Yet nowhere in the group’s public materials is there a clear system for handling someone who commits rape after the prisons close.

Even fellow Democrats are running from this position. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist himself, defended police, prisons, and jails on “The Clay Cane Show” and put clear distance between his administration and the DSA platform. When a sitting Democratic mayor in one of the bluest cities in America won’t touch prison abolition, that tells conservative voters everything they need to know about how unworkable this idea really is.

A Platform Bundled With Other Radical Demands

Romer did not stop at prisons. In the same interview, she confirmed the DSA wants to abolish the Senate, defund the Pentagon, and eventually erase national borders while granting amnesty to illegal immigrants already here. Bundling prison abolition with border abolition and Senate abolition shows this is not a narrow criminal-justice tweak. It is a plan to tear down the constitutional structure that protects American families and communities.

Just straight up say you don’t agree with police and prison abolition and wish it wasn’t in the dsa program lol https://t.co/PWm8tcjC7G

— sentient bloomberg terminal (@kayrosso1) August 10, 2026

Critics on the left have started raising alarms too. The Hill reported Democrats fear the viral interview will “leave a scar” heading into the midterms, since voters now have a co-chair on record admitting the party’s activist wing wants no prisons at all. For conservatives, the lesson is simple: when the people who write these platforms can’t answer what happens to rapists, the public has every reason to reject the whole agenda.