WHAT ISABOLITION?

Critical Resistance’s mission is to end the prison
industrial complex (PIC). The PIC is a systemthat uses policing, courts, and imprisonment to“solve” problems. We don’t agree that we need
the PIC to keep us safe. Instead, we work tobuild safe and healthy communities that do notdepend on prisons and punishment.

WHAT CAN I DO TODAY?

For example, providing drug users with health careand harm reduction strategies instead of locking
them in cages helps reduce the harm that drug use Today, there are small steps that will move us towardmight cause. When public funding is directed into abolition, such as:policing and prisons, budget cuts for social programs, • Instead of supporting construction of a new
prison to make the horrible conditions that
including women’s shelters, welfare and public housing
most prisoners live in a little better, we canare the side effect. These cutbacks leave women lesspush for alternatives that reduce the number ofable to escape violent relationships. Focusing more
people locked in cages.
energy on creating safe and stable conditions insteadof policing and imprisonment reduces harm.
• Instead of calling the police everytime there is aconflict in our neighborhoods, we can establish
We take the name “abolitionist” purposefully from Studies have shown that states with more prisons andcommunity forums and mediation practices tothose who called for the abolition of slavery in the prisoners do not have lower crime rates than otherdeal with harm and conflict.
1800’s. Abolitionists believed that slavery could not states. The PIC claims to be about safety and order.
be fixed or reformed. It needed to be abolished. As In reality, the PIC makes the lives of most people • We can build safer and healthy communities by
PIC abolitionists today, we also do not believe that – especially the poor and people of color – less safe
working to eliminate barriers to housing andreforms can make the PIC just or effective. Our and more disordered. For example, poor people andjobs faced by people coming home from prison
goal is not to improve the system; it is to shrink the people of color are often targeted by the cops based
to help them stay out of the system.
system into non-existence.
on the way they look. And even in instances wherepeople call the cops to solve problems, the cops areoften more disruptive than the original problem. We
cannot build strong communities when people areconstantly being taken out of them.
We all want safe communities. The question is how
do we build safe communities? Is it by locking up andThe PIC did not always exist. The modern day
policing more and more people? Or is it by dealingprison is only about 200 years old. Even today therewith the causes of the harm that is called “crime” inour communities?
We do not have all the answers. But, we do know that are places where people rely on each other insteadof police, courts, and cages.
Even the worst kinds of harm do not happen without people in other parts of the world rely on prisonsa reason. Putting people in cages does not solve any and police far less than the U.S. does, and suffer from It has taken over 200 years to build up the PIC. Weof the problems that lead to harm, like harmful drug far less harm. We also know that communities where can’t expect to take apart such a complicated systemuse, poverty, violence, or mental illness. By separating people have housing, food, education and jobs have in a short time. The first slavery abolitionists began
people from their home communities, and isolating the lowest crime rates. The best way to reduce harm working decades before they won the abolition ofthem in abusive and violent environments, these is by building safe, healthy communities where people slavery. Our struggle is a long one. Believing we canabolish the PIC is the first step.
problems can even get worse. We take seriously the have their basic needs met.

WHO WERE THE FIRSTABOLITIONISTS?

ABOLITION IS
A REALISTIC

WHAT ABOUT
PUBLIC SAFETY?

VISION

WHAT ARE THE
ALTERNATIVES?

harms that happen between people. We believe thatin order to reduce harm we must change the socialand economic conditions in which those harms
take place.

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email. crsouth@criticalresistance.org
www.criticalresistance.org

WHAT ISABOLITION?