Erika Severyns argues that if community music is to contribute meaningfully to abolitionist futures, community musicians must move beyond the language of empowerment and inclusion and towards structural critique. This means situating our practice explicitly within the context of carcerality rather than sidestepping the political conditions that shape our work.

A selection of recent and forthcoming resources.

A selection of recent and forthcoming resources.

This article considers the violence of policing and the state repression of protesting by reflecting on recent clashes with the police that erupted during a national demonstration in Turin, Italy, on 31 January 2026.

A selection of recent and forthcoming resources.

Neda Naji, a left feminist writes about the ongoing repression in Iran and argues for an abolitionist response grounded in care.

Join us for this pilot project on creative methods and abolitionist scholarship in collaboration with the Centre for Communities and Social Justice (University of Greenwich).

So when anti-trans narratives talk about the women’s being made unsafe, they mean it is being made unsafe for a particular set of women who are worthy of protection: those who are in close proximity with the idealised form of woman.

Participants in Irish inquiries have not been silenced or ignored in any simple sense. Instead, they have been drawn into inquiry processes which offer them some public recognition, but carefully restrict their political agency. 

The carceral approach put forward by the ‘modern-day slavery industrial complex’ focuses on punishing the perpetrator rather than being centred on what migrant domestic workers actually want and need for a life of safety and dignity: the right to work and settle in the UK

Sex workers want real, viable economic alternatives, not more policing. Feminists of colour have long criticized radical feminists (and broader anti-violence work) for its focus on interpersonal violence at the cost of institutional violence.

Focusing political attention on the politics of listening helps to avoid an individualist politics that leaves survivors isolated and vulnerable in an ‘economy of believability’ that is stacked against them, and leaves them open to excessive scrutiny, including from feminists.

Last Saturday’s mobilisation in East London showed that real safety and power come not from police or authorities, but from communities organising from within. When neighbors, youth groups, faith networks, and local collectives stand together in solidarity, they create a culture of collective self-defence that builds lasting resilience. The lesson is clear: anti-fascism is most effective when it is proactive, rooted in everyday community life, and linked to political education, solidarity, and shared visions of liberation. True protection comes from strengthening the networks and relationships that bind communities, not relying on the police to keep them safe.

As with contact sexual violence, CLSV is not about sex. It is reflective of, and reinforces, gender inequality, specifically the justification of power imbalances and the normalisation of the subordination of women, girls, and other marginalised genders.

We critique contemporary management of “difficult” mental health, offering a discussion of Community Treatment Orders (CTOs), the limitations of rights advocacy, and offer some alternative avenues for organizing against the neoliberal and carceral management of “difficult” mental health.

Community-based services can be a crucial support system for marginalised young people, particularly when schools fail to meet their needs. Yet these same young people are also among those most frequently targeted or harmed by police or other state services.