Abolition

Abolition is a "political vision that seeks to create a society that imagines ways to address harm and conflict beyond punishment and incarceration. It is about not simply the absence of prisons and policing, but the presence of new infrastructure, social networks and institutions that are not structured through violence, domination, racial capitalism and disposability." -Abolition & Disability Justice Collective

See the prison industrial complex, carceral state, state violence and punitive response for definitions related to abolition.

Abolition is climate justice

Environmental racism and carceral systems both disproportionately impact marginalized people	“When we actually look at who is harmed in both of these instances, it’s the same people... It’s Black people, it’s brown people, it’s Indigenous people, [and] it’s poor folks. It is the exact same populations that are being harmed by dangerous environmental conditions … [and] being thrown in the cages.” -Jordan E. Martinez-Mazurek, co-founder of the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons
Prisons are environmental hazards	Prisons are able to dump, emit, and pollute with near impunity. Raw sewage is often dumped into nearby waterways. Prison construction is sometimes used to repurpose already polluted lands.
The domination of people and the planet are interlinked	“How does the caging of human beings also reflect a broader logic of domination that affects the planet [and] that affects our relationships with our nonhuman species?” "How does that also reflect an obsession with and embrace of hierarchy that I think is at the root of so much of the harm that we’re dealing with?” -David Pellow, chair of the environmental studies department and director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California Incarcerated people are required to do labour for limited compensation. Their labour is overexploited the same way the land is overexploited. Federally sentenced inmates are paid a maximum of $6.90 per day in Canada for their labour.
Climate activists and land defenders are incarcerated for demanding climate action	Police often target Indigenous and allied social movements through tactics of repression, surveillance, and criminalization. This is designed to exert control over these movements.    Legal injunctions, such as those placed against TMX and Coastal GasLink protestors, intentionally target Indigenous movements. The carceral system, therefore, facilitates access to resources and lands through the unjust imprisonment of activists.
Incarcerated folks are more vulnerable to climate events	Incarcerated populations are especially sensitive to high temperatures due old age, and physical and mental health issues. Jails may not offer air conditioning. All of these factors are causing heat-related deaths in prisons to rise.
Damaging the climate and mass incarceration both strip us of comfort and safety	The science is clear that the longer we delay a climate transition, the more at risk we are of losing access to safety and comfort.  Detention and deportation also strip, predominantly marginalized people, of their comfort and safety. Moreover, punitive solutions are more likely to encourage repeated offences, and thus continue the cycle of ciolence.

Example: Stop Cop City

Stop Cop City is a movement that began in 2017 in response to the city of Atlanta's plan to build the biggest police and firefighter training facility in the country. The proposed site for the facility is in the Weelanee forest. It comprises the South River, one of the most endangered rivers in the United States due to sewage pollution.

• The history of the land reveals more injustice. The land belonged to the Muscogee Creek Nation before they were displaced. The land was also the site of a low-security prison farm. Accounts of torture and violence against black inmates were recorded. Today, the forest serves as an important green space for the residents of the predominantly Black surrounding neighbourhoods. Finally, the majority of the funding is expected to come from taxpayers, despite no public consultation on the project.
• Stop Cop City shows multiple intersections of injustice. The development of this carceral training facility would impact environmental, racial, economic injustice and more in the region. Community members have taken over the proposed site to hold community events, strengthening their relationship to each other and to the land. Their convenings provide opportunities to imagine the possibilities for using public tax dollars to fund the needs of the community, rather than threaten the safety of community members and of the forest.

How does abolition relate to transformative justice?

Adrienne Maree Brown	"I tend to think of abolition as one result of transformative justice: abolition is the end of prisons; transformative justice is the methods people use to uproot injustice patterns in communities. I tend to think of abolition as a totality, and I think that can be tricky. People set out to abolish slavery and we ended up with the prison industrial complex because while there were surface and policy level shifts, the culture did not shift. That deep underlying racism and classism remains and is now roaring to the surface as we write this. So, while I identify as an abolitionist, I find speaking about the iterative tangible work of transformative justice makes more sense to me now–I don’t simply want the prisons gone, I want a radically different way of interacting with each other to grow."
Mia Mingus	"I understand abolition to be a necessary part of transformative justice because prisons, and the PIC, are major sites of individual and collective violence, abuse, and trauma. However, transformative justice is and must also be a critical part of abolition work because we will need to build alternatives to how we respond to harm, violence, and abuse. Just because we shut down prisons, does not mean that these will stop. Transformative justice has roots in abolition work and is an abolitionist framework, but goes beyond abolishing prisons (and slavery) and asks us to end–and transform the conditions that perpetuate–generational cycles of violence such as rape, sexual assault, child abuse, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, intimate partner abuse, war, genocide, poverty, human trafficking, police brutality, murder, stalking, sexual harassment, all systems of oppression, dangerous societal norms, and trauma."
Amanda Aguilar Shank	Interpersonal harm is inevitable. Abolition imagines that "each moment where harm happens is an opportunity to transform relationships and communities, build trust and safety, and grow slowly toward the beautiful people we are meant to be, in the world we deserve."

What could abolition look like?

• People in other parts of the world rely on prisons and police far less than North Americans and suffer far less harm.
• "Communities where people have housing, food, education and jobs have the lowest crime rates. The best way to reduce harm is by building safe, healthy communities where people have their basic needs met." - Critical Resistance
• Instead of calling the police when there is a conflict in our neighborhoods, we can establish community forums and mediation practices to address conflict. 
• Abolition is a "vision of a restructured society in a world where we have everything we need: food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, clean water, and more. Things that are foundational to our personal and community safety." -Mariame Kaba, Beautiful Trouble
• Opposed to throwing a perpetrator of sexual violence in prison, could we hold the individual perpetrator accountable, support their transformation and meet the needs of the survivors?

If you have any suggested revisions or additional resources to share related to the above content, please email them to kenzie@lehub.ca.

Back to Homepage