Abolition of police and prisons

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Abolish is to flourish! Against the prison industrial complex and for transformative justice.

See Critical Resistance's definitions below:

The Prison Industrial Complex

The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.

Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for "tough on crime" politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.

Abolition

PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.

From where we are now, sometimes we can't really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn't just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It's also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.

Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.

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Webinar on Carceral Censorship in the U.S. Prison System (piped.kavin.rocks)

submitted 6 months ago by spare@literature.cafe to c/abolition

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Censorship in carceral settings

We will provide information about free resources and ways that you can get involved, help out, and help yourself and loved ones navigate censorship in the carceral system.

This panel conversation brings together people with different experiences of carceral libraries, creating carceral library policy, teaching, journalism, and incarceration to speak about the long history and pernicious and evolving impacts of censorship in prisons, jails, and detention centers in the US and its territories. Learn about the evolving landscape of censorship, and how current research and practice aims to document it and fight back.

Jeanie Austin (they/them)

Jeanie Austin earned their PhD in library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They are a jail and reentry services librarian at the San Francisco Public Library and has provided library services in juvenile detention centers and jails for over a decade. In addition to authoring numerous journal articles, their book, "Library Services and Incarceration: Recognizing Barriers, Strengthening Access" was published by the American Library Association in 2021.

Erin Boyington (she/her)

Erin Boyington has worked as a correctional librarian since 2013. After receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington, she began her library career at the Sterling Correctional Facility Libraries in Sterling, Colorado. In 2016, she joined the Colorado State Library's Institutional Library Development (ILD) unit. ILD provides staff training, develops policy, manages collections, and much more, for adults and youth in over 40 institutional libraries statewide. She has contributed to Intellectual Freedom Stories from a Shifting Landscape (2020) and Exploring the Roles and Practices of Libraries in Prisons: International Perspectives (2021).

Andrew Calderon (he/they)

Andrew is a computational journalist at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the United States criminal justice system. He is also an Adjunct Professor at The New School in New York city, where he teaches data, design and community engagement, and additionally works as a Project & Product Designer for the Journalism + Design Lab, an non-profit initiative to develop civic infrastructure through free journalism and design training at community colleges.

Eldon Ray James (he/him)

While serving a 70-month sentence in federal prison I decided to become a librarian. I made that happen by graduating from the University of Texas at Austin School of Information in 2007 with a Master of Science in Information Studies (MSIS). Amazing serendipity made Dr. Loriene Roy my advisor. She took me to Washington D.C. as a part of her presidential party. She introduced me to the American Library Association and a group called the Prisoners Forum where I found a family with carceral librarians.

One of those librarians, Diane Walden, asked me to help write the Prisoners’ Right to Read: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights and then help move it though ALA. That experience led me to my involvement in the Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC), Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT), and the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) of ALA. I was the 2022 FTRF Roll of Honor winner. I worked on the 4th International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Guidelines for Library Services to Prisoners Working Group, and the ALA Standards for Library Services to the Incarcerated or Detained as a Project Manager and author.

Victoria Van Hyning (she/her)

I am an Assistant Professor of Library Innovation at the University of Maryland, College of Information Studies at College Park. I arrived at the iSchool in 2020, after working at the Library of Congress on the By the People crowdsourced transcription platform for two years. Before that I lived and worked in the UK and earned degrees in English literature. As an academic and as a practitioner, I strive to create systems and experiences that widen access to information for a diverse range of people, and make space for people to tell their own stories and express their information needs. I served as a Project Manager and author for ALA Standards for Library Services to the Incarcerated or Detained. My goals were to provide research and writing support for the new Standards, and to learn and shape how those of us teaching Library and Information Science at the graduate and undergraduate levels can prepare our students to serve in carceral libraries, educational programs, and related positions in public and school libraries serving the needs of returning as well as incarcerated or detained individuals.

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