Resources
This page helps you to navigate the resources we have collated for abolitionist learning and organising.
If you are new to abolition we suggest starting with our reading list or browsing the ‘Introduction to abolition’ resources below.
To search through the resources, you can go to our blog page and use the search function.
Introduction to Abolition
These resources are here to help those new to abolition get to grips with the key ideas. Use the arrows on the right to find more.
We cannot simply do away the police - we need to address the conditions in which people feel that police are the only or best option for responding to harm in their lives. We must build other means for preventing and addressing harm that will actually keep us safe.
On June 15th - 18th 2018, activists from around the world gathered in London for Abolitionist Futures: this year's International Conference on Penal Abolition. Over the weekend, there were over 100 presentations and workshops with contributions from 18 countries, bringing activists and community organisers together to plan for a future where prisons, policing and punishment are no longer used.
Writing for Amaliah, Hejera Begum outlines 3 abolitionist reforms for the UK: Banning police being posted in schools, ending stop and search, and abolishing Prevent.
Campaign Against Prison Expansion put on this excellent panel discussion on prison abolition in the UK.
The World Transformed hosted this excellent panel discussion on police, prisons and immigration enforcement with contributions from Blair Buchanan, Luke Hayes, Dr Tanzil Chowdhury, Rosalind Comyn, Rebecca Roberts, Divya Sundaram and Dr Patrick Williams.
In this video, Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines what a society without prisons looks like. She examines the connections between slavery, racial capitalism and the prison industrial complex.
Abolition in the UK
Prison abolition is often seen as a US concept, however there is an established UK abolitionist movement. Here are some resources to help think about UK abolitionism.
This chart breaks down the difference between reformist reforms which expand the scope of policing, and abolitionist steps that reduce the scale of policing and its detremental impact. It is a UK-relevant resource adapted from a poster created by Critical Resistance in the US.
Campaigning against prisons and the police and attempting to build a just world, free of domination and an economy based on mutual cooperation are not new. Here is an overview of the long history of organisations and individuals in the UK working towards these goals, even if all were not explicitly abolitionist.
Opening Roundtable of the Abolitionist Futures Conference in 2018 with Beth Richie, Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Deborah Coles. Friday 15 June 2018
Sara Chitseko of 4Front writes that body cameras, community policing and police training are not adequate responses to police violence in the UK
Tom Kemp and Koshka Duff discuss what calls to ‘defund the police’ look could look like in the UK.
Abolishing Prisons
Abolitionists reject the common-place assumption that prisons are a necessary part of a just society. Here are some resources for understanding abolitionist arguments against mass incarceration.
We take prisons, or jails, for granted - but how effective are they? And are there better alternatives? In this video, Dr David Scott, explores what a world without prisons might be like.
Writing for 4Front, Sara Chitseko argues that prisons fail to tackle the causes of social problems.
Prisoner Solidarity Network’s John Bowden tours Britain’s Prisons: HMP Brixton, HMP Pentonville and HMP Wandsworth.
Sarah Lamble argues about the need to create stronger connections between struggles for gender and sexual justice and movements against mass incarceration
Abolishing the Police
Here are some resources with abolitionist arguments against the police, guides for what to do instead of calling the police, and imagining abolitionist infrastructure for real public safety.
This chart breaks down the difference between reformist reforms which expand the scope of policing, and abolitionist steps that reduce the scale of policing and its detremental impact. It is a UK-relevant resource adapted from a poster created by Critical Resistance in the US.
These posters can help us think about what safety is and to imagine the infrastructure we need to keep safe. They were designed by Amber Hughson @conflicttransformation
By thinking about why you feel the need to contact the police, developing your own skills around conflict resolution and educating yourself on what alternatives are available, you can minimise police interference in your area and avoid further endangering those who might be put at physical risk by their presence.
Dr. Adam Elliott-Cooper and Adam Pugh talk to Vice to give their ideas on what defunding the police would look like in the UK.
Abolition & Drugs
The resources below illustrate the importance of dismantling state responses to drugs that are based on prohibition and punishment, and how we can build alternatives that centre care, healing and support.
Imani Robinson notes that harm reduction’s foundations in a radical critique of punishment provides a platform to build alliances between movements that seek to dismantle the ‘war on drugs’ and other other carceral systems.
In this excerpt from the panel entitled The Transmission Line: Empire & Abolition, Kojo Koram sheds light on how hegemonic approaches to drugs since the mid-19th century have served the expansion of the carceral state and imperialism.
The use of drug criminalisation as the legal basis for some 60% of all stops in England and Wales exemplifies the role of punitive drug policy in expanding the reach and harms of policing.
WHRIN and TalkingDrugs highlight how women and non-binary people who use drugs are developing responses to the harms at the intersection of gender and drug prohibition in ways that provide space to collectively heal and undermine systems of policing, punishment and surveillance.
The Abolitionist Archive
Abolitionist Futures is pleased to host this digital archive of ‘The Abolitionist’ a magazine that was published in Britain between 1979 and 1987 by the group Radical Alternatives to Prison (RAP). Below you can access copies of the magazine plus an overview / commentary about each one. To view a full list of The Abolitionist archive issues (by date, issue and topic), click on the summary list here.
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1983) No. 14
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1983) No. 13
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1982) No. 12
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1982) No. 11
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1982) No. 10
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1981) No. 9
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1981) No. 8
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1981) No. 7
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1980) No 6
Alternatives to Hollow 1972 - by Radical Alternatives to Prison. Introduction by Rebecca Roberts.
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1980) No. 5
Read a full digital copy of this edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1980) No 4
Read a full digital copy of this double edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1979) No 2/3
Read a full digital copy of the first edition of Radical Alternative to Prison’s journal “The Abolitionist” (1979)
Abolitionist Futures is pleased to host a digital archive of ‘The Abolitionist’ a magazine that was published in Britain between 1979 and 1987 by the group Radical Alternatives to Prison (RAP).
Campaigning against prisons and the police and attempting to build a just world, free of domination and an economy based on mutual cooperation are not new. Here is an overview of the long history of organisations and individuals in the UK working towards these goals, even if all were not explicitly abolitionist.
Gender Based Violence Series
Our Gender Based Violence Series draws on some of the focus of the Abolitionist Strategies to Gender Based Violence resource, while also teasing out some of the problems found in our current ways of conceptualising responses to gender based violence.
Gender-based and sexual violence are widespread, pervasive, and urgently need to be addressed. It seems increasingly critical that we do. Yet the criminal legal system routinely fails to keep us safe from harm. It often inflicts more harm, particularly on those from marginalised and oppressed groups. In light of the ramping up of the Law & Order rhetoric found in the current political offerings, especially relating to Gender Based Violence, as well as the active attacks on bodily autonomy on both sides of the Atlantic we must look at our problems and myriad of potential solutions afresh.
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.
In spite of tort law’s ‘architecture of bias’, some feminist scholars and activists have argued that there is potential for tort law to be expanded to encompass and redress harms which more often and more greatly affect women and other marginalised people. While this can be important for some survivors to meet material needs and provide recognition for a wrong and harm, Martha Chamallas argues that it is not only a matter of individual compensation. It is connected to addressing systemic injustices because harm and violence are not equally inflicted and experienced, varying with intersecting forms of oppression.
the legal and cultural obsession with affirmative consent evidenced in popular feminism, media, and mandatory university trainings cruelly reifies victims of sexual violence as abstract legal subjects, capable of protecting themselves through savvy risk assessment and contractual relations. Indeed, the privileging of consent as a marker of acceptable sexual relations has been thoroughly critiqued by feminist, queer, and liberal legal scholars.
We are less likely to intervene, than to report an incident after the fact. This happens across the spectrum, from the most violent rapes, through street harassment, into universities and other institutions: at the ‘everyday’ end, complaints tend to be submitted when difficult conversations would be more effective. Faith (or hope) in authoritarian systems seems unshakeable, even given overwhelming evidence they don’t keep us safe:
Feminism is a political methodology that can help us name the structural, interpersonal and otherwise murky forces which make up a social landscape. It does so by enabling an examination and analysis of the material conditions which underpin social organisation, it helps us understand the ways that capitalism’s operation is specifically gendered and racialised in its arrangement of labour, social relationships, the economy as well as prisons and the police.
abolitionist strategies, if given support, would be able to address some of the complex root causes of sexualised street harassment which include misogyny, patriarchy, economic inequality, and intersecting forms of marginalisation. It is these structures and norms that render some women more vulnerable to harm, particularly since that harm reflects entrenched norms emerging out of histories of “heterosexism, colonialism, and slavery.”
Mainstream feminism in Britain is commonly preoccupied with the desire for a seat at the table of power; for a stake in the empire, for legislative wins and more women in board rooms and on parliamentary benches. Yet multiple, competing feminisms exist—arguably, feminist work has always been characterised by fragmentation and internal dissent. The halcyon years of the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in the 1970’s is also wrought with dissent and disagreement.
As “carceral feminism” has become ever more distilled, rigidly individualised ideas around what – and who – the “carceral feminist” is have also emerged. A process which has been accelerated with the growing interest in anti-carceral perspectives following calls to defund the police in 2020 in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests.
Recording & Transcript of the public launch of the Abolitionist Strategies VS Carceral Reforms Gender Based Violence Resource. Event was held in June 2024 and the speakers were Leah Cowan, Lola Olufemi and Billy
Gender Based Violence Series launch will draw on some of the focus of the Abolitionist Strategies to Gender Based Violence resource, while also teasing out some of the problems found in our current ways of conceptualising responses to gender based violence.
Tuesday 4 June 2024: Join us for the public launch of our new resource: ‘Addressing Gender-Based Violence: Carceral Reforms vs Abolitionist Strategies.’ Speakers include Leah Cowan, Lola Olufemi and Billy a frontline gender-based violence worker.