Invidious link

Relying on state violence to curb domestic violence only ends up harming the most marginalized women.

While its adherents would likely reject the descriptor, carceral feminism describes an approach that sees increased policing, prosecution, and imprisonment as the primary solution to violence against women.

Casting policing and prisons as the solution to domestic violence both justifies increases to police and prison budgets and diverts attention from the cuts to programs that enable survivors to escape, such as shelters, public housing, and welfare. And finally, positioning police and prisons as the principal antidote discourages seeking other responses, including community interventions and long-term organizing.

By relying solely on a criminalized response, carceral feminism fails to address these social and economic inequities, let alone advocate for policies that ensure women are not economically dependent on abusive partners. Carceral feminism fails to address the myriad forms of violence faced by women, including police violence and mass incarceration. It fails to address factors that exacerbate abuse, such as male entitlement, economic inequality, the lack of safe and affordable housing, and the absence of other resources.

Carceral feminism abets the growth of the state’s worst functions, while obscuring the shrinking of its best. At the same time, it conveniently ignores the anti-violence efforts and organizing by those who have always known that criminalized responses pose further threats rather than promises of safety.

Many prison reformists yearn for the end of imprisonment but find themselves confronted by questions which seem difficult to answer:

• What do we do about those who pose “a danger” to society? Don’t we have to solve that problem before we can advocate the abolition of prisons?

• Is it possible to work for short term prison reforms without being coopted?

• If we devote our energies to abolition, are we not abandoning prisoners to intolerable conditions?

• How can we work for needed prison reforms which require structural change within the society, before a new social order comes about?

As some of these important questions are addressed, we will discover that many reforms can be achieved in an abolition context. The primary issue for abolitionists is not always one of reform over/against abolition. There are “surface reforms” which legitimize or strengthen the prison system, and there are “abolishing-type reforms” which gradually diminish its power and function. Realizing the differences requires some radical shifts in our perceptions, lest we fall into the trap which has plagued earlier generations. Our goal is to replace prison, not improve it.

Over the years, Critical Resistance has generated numerous organizing resources to resist policing. As an abolitionist organization, Critical Resistance supports abolitionist reforms to dismantle the systems of policing and works to create viable alternatives in our communities. From defunding strategies to building alternatives to community safety and defense, each anti-policing resource Critical Resistance has made bolsters the grassroots work of our chapters’ projects and campaigns, and materializes CR’s theory of change: dismantle, change, build. We hope our allies and movements partners find these resources useful and are used to amplify wins against policing, for prison industrial complex abolition around the world.

A list of fun infographics on various abolitionist topics

The three flavors of Abolition we have encountered are as follows: (1) autonomist (2) insurrectionary (3) and procedural:

1. Autonomist Abolition entails a strategy of fugitivity or constant refusal of the instruments of capture and their “catch all solutions” while, at the same time, building hyperlocal (though dispersed in undetectable networks) infrastructures for sustaining bodies (people, collectives, swarms) in resistance.

2. Insurrectionary Abolition entails a direct confrontation and antagonizing of the “big P” Police and its constant attempts to maintain order, while simultaneously attempting to liberate occupied territories.

3. Procedural Abolition entails winning and defending non-reformist reforms enshrined in policies that diminish the reach of the carceral state while simultaneously redirecting collective capacities towards social infrastructures that do not reinstate carceral instruments of capture and control.