Part 15: On Abolition

Part Fifteen, “On Abolition,” provides a set of readings and organizational tools to conceptualize and act upon the necessity to build alternatives to detention and abolish the immigration detention system, prisons, and policing.

Readings

What Abolitionists Do, Jacobin Magazine

Alexander, Michelle, “The Fire This Time,” in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press, 2010.

Bernstein, Nell. Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison. The New Press, 2016.
CR10 Publications Collective, Abolition Now: Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex. AK Press, 2008.
Davis, Angela, Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Ending Mass Incarceration: Charting a New Justice Reinvestment, Justice Strategies, 2013.
Harnett, Steven John. Challenging the Prison-Industrial Complex: Activism, Arts, and Educational Alternatives. University of Illinois Press, 2012.
Loyd, Jenna M., Matt Mitchelson, and Andrew Burridge, “Borders, Prisons, and Abolitionist Visions,” and “Race, Capitalist Crisis, and Abolitionist Organizing: An Interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore, February 2010,” in Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis. University of Georgia Press, 2012.
Abolishing Immigration Detention, IMM Print
Hernández, Kelly Lytle, “Amnesty or Abolition: Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,” Boom: A Journal of California 1.4 (Winter 2011), 54–68.
Resolution Calling for the Abolition of For-Profit Private Prisons, Presbyterian Church (USA), 2003.
Stanley, Eric, Dean Spade, and Queer (In)Justice, “Queering Prison Abolition, Now?” American Quarterly 64 (2012) 115–27.
Sudbury, Julia, “Reform or Abolition?: Using Popular Mobilizations to Dismantle the Prison-Industrial Complex,” Criminal Justice Matters 77 (2009) 17–19.
From Prison Reformist to Abolitionist

Artwork by Mohammad, from immigration detention in Australia. The Refugee Art Project

Alternatives to Detention

The International Detention Coalition has identified over 250 examples of alternatives to detention from 60 countries.

There are Alternatives, Immigration Detention Coalition (2015):

Alternatives to Detention, Detention Watch Network.

ACLU Fact Sheet on Alternatives to Immigration Detention (ATD)

Ending the Use of Detention to Deter Migration, Detention Watch Network, April 2015.

Considering a Private Jail, Prison or Detention Center? A Resource Packet for Community Members and Public Officials Grassroots Leadership, September 2009.

Progress or Profit? Positive Alternatives to Privatization in Shelby County, TN — Proposes a set of solutions that will help the county cut spending and reduce its jail population while continuing to protect public safety. Grassroots Leadership and Coalition Against Private Prisons (CAPP), 2006.

More Resources

Prison Abolition Syllabus, Black Perspectives, African American Intellectual History Society, 2016

Abolition Toolkit and Transformative Justice Resources by Empty Cages Collective

Creative Interventions Toolkit to stop interpersonal violence

Critical Resistance: An international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex and The Abolitionist Toolkit

Prison Abolition is a Queer issue Zine

Prisons Will Not Protect You, Against Equality

The New Abolitionists: (Neo)slave Narratives And Contemporary Prison Writings

The Queer, feminist & trans politics of prison abolition toolkit

A new documentary that introduces the history, theory and practices of the contemporary prison abolition movement. Weaving together the voices of women entangled in the criminal justice system, along with leading scholars on prison abolition (Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore), this film provides a critical analysis of the disfunctionality and violence of the prison system.

Here is another great discussion that we were able to film at the Law & Disorder conference in Portland this past April. In this video, Decolonize PDX discusses why they felt forming was so necessary, what Decolonize PDX means to the collective, occupy and people of color, and prison abolition. If this video interest you, we urge you to pass it around to friends and family! http://decolonizepdx.weebly.com/

Hailed by the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival as "a fascinating chronicle of justice and strength," FREE ANGELA tells the dramatic story of how a young professor's social justice activism implicates her in a botched kidnapping attempt that ends with a bloody shootout, four dead, and her name on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.

Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons --An interview with author Victoria Law By Angola 3 News Activist and journalist Victoria Law is the author of "Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women" (PM Press, 2009). Law has previously been interviewed by Angola 3 News on two separate occasions.