Since beginning in 1997, Critical Resistance has worked to curtail the use and impacts of imprisonment – from regional and international conferences bringing together communities long separated by years of incarceration to organizing for re-entry support for former prisoners, resisting three-strikes laws, providing meaningful education and organizing training and resources for formerly imprisoned women in transitional housing programs, to amnesty campaigns, political prisoner support and media support for prisoner resistance, and to hustling to permanently shut down jails and prisons. Through this work, Critical Resistance has generated countless resources to fight imprisonment in many different institutions.
Below will you find a list of featured resources for fighting imprisonment from Critical Resistance. You can also search for more anti-imprisonment resources that Critical Resistance has in our arsenal on our resource hub here.
Please check back for resources as we update this page.
Toolkits
Abolitionist Assessments of Pre-Trial and Bail Reforms
In July 2021, Critical Resistance released a new abolitionist organizing resource, On the Road to Freedom, a toolkit created in partnership with Community Justice Exchange, visually designed by Danbee Kim, and written by Mohamed Shehk, Pilar Weiss, Rachel Foran, Sharlyn Grace, and Woods Ervin. The goal of this tool is to provide organizers seeking to challenge pretrial detention with guidance–including examples, possible challenges, and best practices–for carrying out an abolitionist campaign, and ideally resulting in more wins!
Charts, Posters & FactSheets
Reformist Reforms vs Abolitionist Steps to End Imprisonment Chart
This poster is a tool to assess and understand differences between reforms that strengthen imprisonment and abolitionist steps that reduce its overall impact and grow other possibilities for wellbeing.
Videos
Breaking Down the Prison Industrial Complex Video Project
The Impacts of the Prison Industrial Complex
(Laura Whitehorn)
Control Units
(Masai Ehehosi)
“How Have You Seen the Ways that Formerly Imprisoned People are Fighting the PIC?”
(Dorsey Nunn)
Challenging Corrections
(Maya Schenwar)
Political Education & Resistance Inside
(Masai Ehehosi)
Jail Hasn’t Worked for My Sister
(Maya Schenwar)
Political Prisoners & Prisoners of War
(Masai Ehehosi)
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity: Prisoners & Family Members Speak Out against Solitary Confinement and Gang Validation
Why Target Jailing Systems?
Jails function as localized imprisonment – in the US this is often on a county level – usually caging people for shorter amounts of time than state or federal prisons. People imprisoned in jails are often awaiting trial, have been sentenced to lower level charges, are awaiting placement into mental health hospitals or other jailing facilities, or may have been sentenced to “flash incarceration”.
Jails are an integral component in the functioning of the prison industrial complex connecting the systems of policing, courts, and imprisonment. Jails must be abolished.
- Abolitionist Responses to Jail Expansion and Reform (chart)
- Towards the Abolition of Imprisonment: Dismantling Jails