would an anarcho-communist society still have prisons?

class-struggle-anarchism:

Short answer - no.

Long answer - I have no problem with societies collectively deciding some kind of coercive limits on people who pose a direct and provable danger - peadophiles, rapists, serial killers etc… Anarchism doesn’t mean you get free reign to abuse people without consequence, and I’d imagine that different communities would come up with different strategies to deal with these kind of direct threats, which I don’t think can be adequately handled without coercive force. These are a tiny proportion of prisoners though, and although I don’t think a liberated society would be free of this sort of behaviour entirely, I do think the proportion would get drastically smaller when people are raised and supported in an environment of mutual respect and open communication where their immediate needs are met etc. 

This sort of protective function is categorically not what prisons are though, prisons are vast institutions of social control which are there to discipline us, not protect us. The fact that a small number of very dangerous individuals are kept away from society in prisons is nothing compared with the massive social harm they do to entire communities, inside and out, acting as fortresses of racial and class warfare, creating anti-social behaviour, stigmatizing, institutionalising, destroying families, disciplining the labour force etc. They don’t protect us from crime, they are crime