but like, what do these people want to do about murderers, rapists/child molesters, etc?
And that's completely ignoring the (admittedly small) population of psychopaths and serial killers. What do we do for them, were we to abolish prisons? Straight up execute them? I mean, I'm fine with that, but I doubt a "prison abolitionist" would be.
All this said, I am absolutely for abolishing private, for-profit prisons. They drive a lot of the issues our current penal system has.