Linked with Ellen Barry – USA.
The prison abolition movement seeks to abolish prison and the prison system which advocates of the movement claim are inhumane. Prison abolitionists present a broad critique of the modern Western criminal justice system, alleged to be both racist and classist as well as ineffectual at reforming criminals, decreasing crime, or reconciling the victims of crime … (wikipedia).
More on wikipedia:
- Advocates for prison abolition.
- Prison reforms and alternatives.
- Arguments made for prison abolition.
- List of organizations supporting prison abolition.
The prison abolition movementseems not having an own website, but it is named on many related publications:
Indy TV#15: Critical Resistance and the Prison Abolition Mov’t.: « Critical Resistance’s vision is the creation of genuinely safe, healthy communities that respond to harm without relying on prisons and punishment. We call our vision « abolition », and take the name purposefully from those who called for the abolition of slavery in the 1800’s. Abolitionists believed that slavery could not be fixed or reformed – it needed to be abolished. As PIC abolitionists today, we also do not believe that reforms can make the PIC just or effective. Our goal is not to improve the system; it is to shrink the system into non-existence ».
The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A Conversation.
Abstract: This paper looks at the prison abolition movement, a small yet growing movement that seeks to eliminate the use of prisons as a means of punishment. While prison abolition is ideologically very radical, the tactics of one of its main organizations, Critical Resistance, as well as the beliefs of its members, appear to be surprisingly nonradical. This paper investigates why ideological and tactical radicalism diverge so dramatically within Critical Resistance. It finds that Critical Resistance’s ideology is disproportionately radical for expressive and tactical reasons: the group engages in a form of symbolic radicalism that creates powerful, totalizing new symbols around which to organize and tries to radically subvert the symbolic and ideological dimensions of criminal justice debates. These findings suggest both the importance of attending to discrepancies in degree of radicalism between ideology and tactics, as well as the possibility that some social movements may blur the lines between the two dimensions by using their ideology in a tactical manner. (See Symbolic Radicalism: Tactics and Ideology in the Prison Abolition Movement).
Manifestation in Oakland: START DATE: Friday September 26 TIME: 1:30 PM – 6:30 PM Location Details: Laney College, 900 Fallon St., Oakland, CA 94607. Event Type: Conference 1:30pm – 3:00pm … Strategies & Struggle to Abolish the Prison Industrial Complex, Sept. 23, 2008, (full long text, Critical Resistance is 10 years old).
Sorry, no contact address found.