No One is Disposable: Resources and Context for a Conversation on Prison Abolition
BCRW recently released a series of four short online videos produced in in conjunction with the upcoming online event No One is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Prison Abolition, co-sponsored by the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. In the videos, activists Reina Gossett and Dean Spade discuss prison abolition as a political framework, exploring why this is a top issue for those committed to supporting trans and gender-nonconforming people. In their discussions, Reina and Dean quickly run through quite a few people, organizations, and concepts that are fundamental to the diverse and ever-expanding prison abolition movement. I created this blog post to serve as a reference for the videos and discussion, to provide broader context as well as a starting point for further exploration of the prison abolition movement.
“Trans State Pen” by Talcott Broadhead used in Part 2: Practicing Prison Abolition Everyday. This illustration was originally used in Dean Spade’s trans politics manifesto video Impossibility Now.
What is the “prison industrial complex”?
Here is a definition of the prison industrial complex, often referred to as the PIC, as defined by Communities Against Rape and Abuse (PDF):
“The prison industrial complex (PIC) refers to a massive multi-billion dollar industry that promotes the exponential expansion of prisons, jails, immigrant detention center, and juvenile detention centers. The PIC is represented by corporations that profit from incarceration, politicians who target people of color so that they appear to be “tough on crime,” and the media that represents a slanted view of how crime looks in our communities. In order to survive, the PIC uses propaganda to convince the public how much we need prisons; uses public support to strengthen harmful law-and-order agendas such as the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terrorism”; uses these agendas to justify imprisoning disenfranchised people of color, poor people, and people with disabilities; leverages the resulting increasing rate of incarceration for prison-related corporate investments (construction, maintenance, goods and services); pockets the profit; uses profit to create more propaganda.”
The Prison Culture blog has a useful compilation of various definitions for the PIC.
Who are prison abolitionists?
Prison abolitionists are political activists who share the goal of eliminating the “security culture” of imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment. Abolitionists stress that the prison industrial complex is not an isolated system (this documentary, The House I Live In, traces the privatization of US prisons and the connections between prisons’ massive profits and the “War on Drugs”). In order to effect real and sustainable change we must call for not only the abolition of prison cages, but also the reorder of a society and culture dependent on security, criminality, and punishment. Prison abolitionists challenge us to change the way we think about who is free and who is not. As Reina and Dean discuss, abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal. (Much of this information is drawn from the definition provided on the Critical Resistance website.)
INCITE! is a “nation-wide network of radical feminists of color working to end violence against women, gender non-conforming, and trans people of color.”
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