Irish Penal Abolition Network: A New Voice With An Old Ideal
Live illustration of a workshop on abolitionist strategies.
Irish General Election
As the Dáil in Dublin wins up it’s business and an general election looms large the Irish Penal Abolition Network have focused attention on how the electorate continues to be promised safety through carcerality, and governments in waiting seem all to ready to promise prison building rather than building homes.
We envision this abolitionist manifesto for the General Election as crafting a three-legged stool. Each leg must be in place for the stool to fulfil its purpose. If a single leg is missing, the stool collapses.For the upcoming election, our three ‘legs’ are:
We launch these, alongside election leaflets in the hopes of interrupting some of this further slide to a ‘Law & Order’ mantra from our politicians. We want social justice, not criminal justice.
Who Are We & Where we started
Prisons and punishment in Ireland are over-utilised. Despite lofty goals, they do not help victims of harm, people who offend, or communities. Yet, ask a number of people walking on a city street and the majority will agree with the view that we need more prison spaces and longer sentences. For decades now in Ireland, hoping to be viewed as “tough on crime,” politicians have created a vicious circle by proposing more prison as the solution to people’s legitimate and real concerns about social conflicts and harms. If all you have is a hammer, then every social conflict is a nail.
But this seductive myth that sending more people to prison will make our communities safer has real world consequences, especially as the Irish Government seeks to now build another 1,100 prison spaces by 2030. It is this political, policy and media environment which prompted early conversations on the need for a collective abolitionist voice in Ireland and action to counter this prison expansion. Initially, in November 2023, a small group of academics, practitioners, researchers, and activists— from University College Cork, Ulster University, Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice and Incarcerated Workers Organising Committee —met online regularly to sketch out how an abolitionist network could function; agree upon its vision for change; and plan how the network could utilise its collective experience and resources in the most strategic way possible. Central to this nascent phase was the composition of a four-page Guiding Document, which outlined an agreed vision for IPAN:
“to see the number of people in prison greatly reduced; the centrality of the prison being displaced in society as the solution to social conflict; and the resources allocated to penal infrastructure being reallocated to housing, education and health services, particularly to the communities most affected by imprisonment.”
Abolitionist Futures have been involved since May 2024.
Our Aims and Values
Reflecting back on the first months of the network, it was an exciting time (and still is) as fresh ideas were being generated as there were no fixed boundaries or established structures to stymie imagination. However, the flip side of this generative approach is the risk that the network becomes shapeless. This would be regrettable as there is so much urgent work to be done challenging penal policy and practice; highlighting its limitations; and working to reshape and redirect penal policy and practice. To give some light structure to this energy and enthusiasm, the network agreed upon three broad aims to situate our work within the overlapping spheres of discourse, community and policy.
Firstly, within discourse or public commentary, IPAN seeks to challenge historic and contemporary discourses on the value and efficacy of punishment and incarceration as a response to harms in society. Secondly, at a community level, IPAN wants to create a space of community and solidarity where we can collectively aim to transform societal responses to harm. This type of interruptive policy from the grassroots is crucial to combat the vacuum, created by an increasingly fragmented society and the failures of governance to provide a social safety net. Thirdly, within formalised policy avenues, IPAN seeks to challenge and inform criminal justice policy and practice now and into the future. It exists to counter expansionist policy and implementation, using expert knowledge drawn from lived experience realities, practitioner reflections, and academic scholarship.
From the beginning, there was a common understanding amongst members that IPAN would be centred on action and outputs. Rather than becoming a “talking shop” for ideas and theory, we would commit to action and allow our reflections and thinking to be shaped by action; discerning both what is effective within an Irish context and what is not. Creating an inclusive space for a variety of voices (practitioners, academics, those with lived experience, community members), IPAN wants to progress prison and penal abolition as an all Ireland network.
As prison expansion is at the forefront of current penal policy in Ireland, we have decided to focus early efforts of our network on prison abolition and challenging the logic of prison building. However, as outlined in our Guiding Document, we believe that we have to re-imagine the ways we live together and abolish all forms of punishment.
What we have gotten up to
Over the course of 2024, as IPAN entered the next phase of its growth, various members organised a number of successful events. In May, we organised a half-day workshop “Visualising Prison and Penal Abolition Together: A participatory approach to building an all Island Prison and Penal Abolition Network” in Cork. By bringing together activists, advocates, academics, practitioners, and those with lived experience of the criminal justice system, the workshop facilitated break-out groups for brainstorming and creative mapping exercises to co-develop new ways of working for a more just future. This in-person time was key to develop the next steps to form IPAN and have an opportunity to meet in person.
In July, we organised a critical criminology stream at the Irish North South criminology conference in Belfast. With an abolitionist roundtable—involving Mo Mansfield, Phil Scraton and Justin Piché—and three parallel sessions, the stream facilitated the inclusion of critical papers and challenging ideas at the conference. IPAN also had a soft launch during the abolitionist roundtable. Lastly, in October, the Irish University Prison Education Network, IPAN, and Access UCC invited Romarilyn Ralston to deliver a talk Knowledge is Power: Justice Education as a Liberatory Practice in Cork. Romarilyn is the Senior Director of Justice Education Center in California and identifies as a black feminist abolitionist with an incarceration experience.
Our Future Plans
For the upcoming general election, IPAN is planning a bottom-up campaign where we seek to deflate the myth that more prisons make communities safer and convince voters that fewer prisons and less prisoners would allow a re-allocation of much-needed resources to communities. By providing individuals and groups with resources to engage with politicians and canvassers on their doorsteps; lazy “tough on crime” talk can be challenged and ideas from the penal abolitionist tradition can be shared.
A future without prisons will not happen in the lifetime of the next Government but the battle for hearts and minds starts today and we need as much solidarity and support from like minded groups as we can get!
Please contact us at irishpenalabolitionnetwork@gmail.com if you want to be added to our mailing list, get involved in the work, or connect us with others. Give us a follow on X on the handle @IrishPenalAbol