Prison Abolition - Tumblr Posts
I'm very in favor of abolishing the police and prisons, but I still have strong feelings of wanting to see the "bad person get what they deserve". I know the vast majority of people in prison are in for nonviolent crimes and prison is torture and the whole system's fucked but I don't know what to do with the beliefs about justice I've been taught my whole life. I know revenge/punishment isn't justice but I'm not sure I know what is. Do you have any recommendations (books, articles, videos, etc)?
hey, grappling with this is normal. if you’ve ever heard the phrase “kill the cop in your head,” that’s partly what it refers to. reframing what justice means to us and the kinds of justice we can envision is one of the first and most important steps of thinking about abolition.
luckily, abolitionists have been organizing, thinking about, writing about, dreaming about, and sharing this information for decades. people who are new to abolition don’t have to imagine a new kind of justice. in many areas, that justice is already in practice.
i’m going to link to and mention a lot of information here, so i really advise that interested folks take their time and come back to these resources as they’re able.
Abolition Journal put together a study guide here that’s full of great resources. i recommend checking the whole thing out, but Week 6 in particular goes into alternatives to prison.
Transformharm.org, created by Mariame Kaba, is truly a treasure trove of resources, articles, and curricula for people who are new to transformative justice.
The Abolitionist Toolkit created by Critical Resistance is another great resource that I frequently share. (Critical Resistance in general is a terrific place for more info.)
Survived and Punished is an amazing organization and they’ve curated a bunch of resources here.
Here’s a Police and Prison Abolition Resource Guide (PDF) with just. So many links to resource kits, articles, videos, etc etc etc.
Many of the above guides and hubs combine written, audio and visual resources so I hope people are able to find what works for them. If you have specific access needs, let me know and I’ll see what I can round up.
For podcasts, I highly recommend Rustbelt Abolition Radio.
For books that I personally have read/own, I recommend Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis; Conflict is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman; The Revolution Starts at Home (anthology); and We Do This Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba.
as you can see, there is just so, so much information out there, developed over decades by people who intimately understand harm, injustice and the carceral system. I actually had to reign in how much info I could have shared just to keep this post from being eight miles long lol. The question of “what do we do instead of police and prisons?” isn’t a simple one, of course, and it isn’t a question one person has the answer to. Hopefully these resources are a useful jumping off point for you.
Honestly “Are Prisons Absolete?” By Angela Davis should be entry level reading to call yourself any sort of leftist or anarchist or whatever. It’s literally under 100 pages and written in v accessible, colloquial language.
And honestly, if you haven’t read it you aren’t allowed to add comments to my prison abolition posts lol
in case y'all ain't seen this yet, it has resources on:
Prison Abolition
Police Abolition
Abolitionist Toolkits
Abolition and Coronavirus
Origin Stories
Criminalizing Blackness
Sexual Violence and Anti-Carceral Feminism
Restorative and Transformative Justice
Disability Justice
The Perils of Reform
Prison Organizing, Past and Present
Private Prisons and Prison Labor
Mutual Aid and/as Abolition
Child Welfare and Family Regulation
The Nonprofit Industrial Complex
Climate (In)Justice and Prisons
Crimmigration
LGBTQ Criminalization
Christianity and Prison Abolition
Abolition for Parents and Young People
Abolition, Surveillance, and “(Counter)Terrorism”
Should Killer Cops Go To Prison?
Abolition and Gun Violence/Control
“Sex Offenses” and Civil Commitment
Sex Work Decriminalization
Hate Crimes and White Supremacist Violence
Abolition and Universities
🏴ACAB WORLDWIDE BABEY🏴
Radical poster designs by Pages Against the Machine
Here's his GoFundMe. It has passed its initial goal but keep sharing and donate if you can to help Hamza.
I love all of F.D Signifier's videos, but I wanted to especially highlight his video about cops and the prison system
just a friendly reminder that, just because slavery was formally "abolished" in the so-called united states* in 1865, enslavement itself is still ongoing in the form of incarceration, which disproportionately affects Black and Indigenous people
(*i say "so-called" because the US is a settler-colonial construction founded on greed, extraction, and white supremacy) recommended readings/resources:
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
"How the 13th Amendment Kept Slavery Alive: Perspectives From the Prison Where Slavery Never Ended" by Daniele Selby
"So You're Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist" by Mariame Kaba
"The Case for Prison Abolition: Ruth Wilson Gilmore on COVID-19, Racial Capitalism & Decarceration" from Democracy Now! [VIDEO]
im always thinking about that post where someones grandma said “some people have never cleaned a bathroom and it shows” bc it does show