Futures
Fractal Abolition
The work of tearing down structures of harm while building the world we want can and must start small.
TOPICS
Futures
IMAGINING A WORLD WITHOUT MASS INCARCERATION
50 posts in ‘Futures’
interventions
A Place to Be Free
Life in prison is hard. Transitioning back home through reentry shouldn’t be harder.
book review
The Gun of Incarceration
Probation and parole in the United States don’t work. A longtime reformer and advocate has drawn a blueprint to end them.
first person
Envisioning Futures
The art of knowing what we’re confronting and revealing who is being made invisible by the carceral state.
interventions
Abolition Everywhere
Despite the stumbling blocks imposed by Republican state governments, abolition is happening in the South and in small towns, with organizing specially tailored to local needs.
roundtable
Radicalized in Service of Others
Organizing and collective acts of resistance allow us to not only imagine new understandings of justice and safety, but to live them out.
abolition
Abolishing the Family
The fight against police and prisons cannot be separated from the struggle to extend care beyond the limits of the family form.
Beyond Reform
No Place for Families
Only an end to family court can lead to a radical reimagining of how we support children and caregivers.
interventions
On Both Sides of the Gun
Community-based gun violence prevention is at a crossroads. A group in Chicago shows how abolition may hold the key to its future.
Essay
Abolition Is Practical
Putting our ideas into practice—allowing ourselves to try, fail, and try again—will be how we move closer to a world without the harms of policing, prisons, and punishment.
Futures
Rejecting Our Fear of Each Other
In order to invest in a vision for a new way of living, we have to believe in our capacity to create something better—together.
In Depth
The Carceral Labor Continuum
So many people, on both sides of the prison wall, labor under threat of state violence. This opens a path to more robust, far-reaching worker solidarity.
Crimmigration
Exploited No More
How organizing workers in immigrant detention can serve as a foundation for abolition and liberation for all.
collective action
Building Worker Power
How one labor union in New York is organizing and creating solidarity among formerly incarcerated workers—and winning.
Ideas & Essays
The Alchemy of Abolitionisms
When academics are read more than incarcerated thinkers, it becomes possible to forget the movement’s radical roots.
Essay
Gideon Turns Sixty
The Court’s decision must not preempt questions about the role public defenders can play in ending mass incarceration.
In Their Words
Remembering Tewkunzi
“All of us who’ve been inside have healing to do. There are so many survivors in prison. And then surviving prison requires its own kind of healing.”
In Depth
Criminalizing Survival
The criminal legal system heaps more violence on victims of gender-based violence. Abolishing these structures is the only way to protect them.
Essay
A New Clarity
We need new words and understandings — not only for crime, freedom, and responsibility, but also for history and spacetime — because it gets us closer to an abolitionist world.
recommendations
The Year in Books
As 2022 draws to a close, we reflect on books that informed, inspired, and empowered us to envision a world without mass incarceration.
advocacy
A Passport to the Future
Pell grant restoration for incarcerated students is long overdue. But without infrastructure and safeguards, higher education, and true freedom, will remain elusive.
Reflections
Reshaping Our Wanting
There is a place for desire in an abolitionist world, at least when desire is pleasure and love and freedom.
Decarceral Pathways
Revoking Probation
After years of working in the system, a reformer and believer in government gives up on probation and parole.
interventions
A Secret Stash of Power
Now more than ever, we need a clear understanding of the role of violence, trauma, and survivorship in our harm reduction practice.
democracy & power
Culture Wars and Criminalization
Absent a sustained politics of solidarity, culture wars will continue to erode civil rights while criminalizing, surveilling, and punishing those who claim them
Policy
Decarcerating from Within
Here's how imprisoned writers can offer reasoned analysis on policies affecting the carceral state.
A closer look
Growing Justice
Why understanding restorative and transformative justice on their own terms, and at their best and worst, will help us build more of both.
Beyond Reform
Reclaiming Safety
In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.
Crimmigration
Court-Assisted Expulsions
Immigrants fighting their deportations need lawyers. That doesn’t mean federally funding their defense should be a movement goal.
Beyond Reform
No More Courts
The legal institutions, processes, procedures, and actors implicated in the progression of criminal cases are simply beyond reform.