Welcome

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the Abolitionist Futures conference in June 2018. We have had a little break over the summer and will be back soon to help support and coordinate future activities to help build the abolitionist movement.

Check out our conference podcasts and photo gallery here.

NEWS: Activists from across the world gather in London to plan for a world without prisons and police

In summer 2018 (15-18th June 2018), London hosted Abolitionist Futures: Building Social Justice Not Criminal Justice, an international gathering of activists and community organisers to coordinate and plan for a future where prisons and police are no longer used.

With more than 100 workshops with contributions from 18 countries, participants explored practical solutions and strategies to replace detention, policing and punishment through better systems of accountability and transformative justice. Read more….

Why abolition?

The criminal justice system is violent and harmful: The UK’s prison population has risen by 90% in the last two decades, bringing the number to over 90,000. At the time of writing we are 156 days into 2018 and already we have seen at least 129 deaths in prison, immigration detention centres and at the hands of the police. As the effects of neoliberalism and austerity deepen each day, increasing numbers of people find themselves made disposable by our economic system and structural inequality, targeted by the agencies of the criminal justice system simply for being homeless, experiencing poor mental health or being born in a different country.

The criminal justice system does not reduce social harm: Policing, courts and the prison system are presented to us by politicians and the media as solutions to social problems. Yet, as the prison population has soared, we have continued to seen violence and harm in our society on a massive scale. Violence against women and girls is endemic, racism and the far right are on the rise in Britain and rates of murder and violent assaults are beginning to increase again. As politicians continue to scapegoat those with the least power in society, the conditions of structural violence that so often precede interpersonal violence remain in place.

We can build a world based on social justice, not criminal justice: All over the world, communities are coming together to build real solutions to societal problems. These solutions lie outside of the criminal justice system, in preventing harm through building a better society. By bringing together groups and organisations working for social justice, we want to demonstrate and strengthen the links between prison abolition and wider struggles for housing, health, education, and environment; and for economic, racial, gender, sexual and disability justice.