I often think about how much of shifting people towards a more abolitionist stance involves just de-normalizing the amount of violence that someone currently takes part in. A lot of the societal norms that develop to ideologically justify normalized violence can be challenged, and even if it's just a momentary hiccup the disruption of this normalization does tend to shift some people's behavior over time to an extent that is worth the time it takes to have these conversations.
these unquestioned beliefs largely develop to solve the cognitive dissonance that occurs for most people who are not actively desiring to be violent to others but who nevertheless freely use violence as a tool as long as it is externalized sufficiently so they are not confronted with the physical application of it. It's sort of a dissociative strategy of coping with their own role in harm. because of that, sometimes using basic grounding strategies can help people leave that dissociative state and confront the reality of the violence in which they are engaging.
for example, many librarians will engage in carceral violence by enforcing library policies (e.g. "no sleeping" policies) with armed security or calling police. What is actually playing out in these instances in literal terms is that the librarian in question is willing to leverage an extreme level of violence (threatening a community member with lethal weapons, abduction, and torture--even if they are not killed, arrested, and imprisoned the threat of this is used to coerce obedience) for falling asleep near them.
They probably don't think about what they're doing in this way, and don't think of themselves as the sort of person who would kill, kidnap, and torture someone or even genuinely threaten to do so. There are two main ways to create a justification for this level of violence: you can externalize responsibility for this violence to the person hired by the state to commit it as "the only available option" and justify it as "for the public good" or you can dehumanize the person you are inflicting violence on so that you don't have to deal with the reality that you're doing this to another person.
(Dehumanization is much harder to deescalate, because if someone is willing to dehumanize, they are willing to inflict any level of violence. Hightlighting the violence they engage in won't meaningfully change their position. I find it more effective as an abolitionist to just directly oppose them as dangerous people who should not have access to power at all, rather than engaging them in any sort of good-faith conversation)
The externalization of responsibility often comes into play with rhetorical "helplessness" and inevitability of this violence through a construction of the false limitation of possible responses. They don't want to admit they are making choices, so they must construct a reality where that is the only choice, and thus they are not truly responsible for making it. This version usually sounds like a series of questions not intended to be answered, e.g. "if I can't call police then why would anyone follow policies? what do I do to enforce them if someone just refuses? what if they get violent?"
Sometimes breaking through this is walking them through a basic scenario where there is no one to call, only themselves and the community member. You see them sleeping. You want to enforce the policy. What do you try first? Maybe you try to wake them up. Say they don't wake up right away. Maybe you get louder or shake the table a little. Say they wake up now, and you let them know about the no-sleeping policy, but they fall asleep again later. What do you do? You can wake them up again, or you could let them sleep. At what point in this process do you threaten them with a nightstick or a loaded gun? Whoa that's a huge escalation!! Yes, exactly.
