What is Abolition? How Did We Get Here?

Popular Press

• Baker, B. (2020, Dec. 10). Why I became an abolitionist. Harper’s Bazaar. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a34473938/why-i-became-an-abolitionist/
• Berger, D., Kaba, M., and Stein, D. (2017, Aug. 24). What abolitionists do. Jacobin. https://jacobin.com/2017/08/prison-abolition-reform-mass-incarceration
• Clark, P. (2019, September 11). It’s time to talk prison abolition in South Africa. Mail & Guardian. https://mg.co.za/article/2019-09-11-its-time-to-talk-prison-abolition-in-south-africa/
• Davis, M. (1995). Hell factories in the field: A prison-industrial complex. The Nation. http://archive.li/RF45D#selection-573.0-573.56
• Fuchs, L. W. (2021, Nov. 17). Why do we call the police? Dissent Magazine. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/booked-why-do-we-call-the-police
• Gilmore, R.W. & Kilgore, J. (2019, June 19). The case for abolition. The Marshall Project. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/06/19/the-case-for-abolition
• Kaba, M. (2020, Oct. 30). So you’re thinking about becoming an abolitionist. LEVEL. https://level.medium.com/so-youre-thinking-about-becoming-an-abolitionist-a436f8e31894
• Kaba, M. and Hayes, K. (2018). A jailbreak of the imagination: Seeing prisons for what they are and demanding transformation. Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/a-jailbreak-of-the-imagination-seeing-prisons-for-what-they-are-and-demanding-transformation/
• Mansfield, M. (2018, June 13). What is abolitionist feminism, and why does it matter? IPPR. https://www.ippr.org/juncture-item/what-is-abolitionist-feminism-and-why-does-it-matter
• Shakur, A. (1978). Women in prison: How we are. Abolition Notes. https://abolitionnotes.org/assatashakur/womeninprison

Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed

• Beckett, K., & Murakawa, N. (2012). Mapping the shadow carceral state: Toward an institutionally capacious approach to punishment. Theoretical Criminology, 16(2), 221–244.
• Brown, M., & Schept, J. (2017). New abolition, criminology and a critical carceral studies. Punishment & Society, 19(4), 440–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474516666281
• Chartrand, V. (2019). Unsettled times: Indigenous incarceration and the links between colonialism and the penitentiary in Canada. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 61(3), 67–89. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjccj.2018-0029
• Haley, S. & Harcourt, B.E. (2022). Abolition feminism with Sarah Haley. Revolution 13/13. https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/revolution1313/12-13/
• Sudbury, J. (2009). Maroon abolitionists: Black gender-oppressed activists in the anti-prison movement in the US and Canada. Meridians, 9(1), 1–29.
• Terwiel, A. (2020). What is carceral feminism? Political Theory, 48(4), 421-442. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591719889946

Books

• Bradley, G. and de Noronha, L. (2022). Against borders: The case for abolition. Verso Books
• Browne, S. (2015). Dark matters: On the surveillance of Blackness. Duke University Press. 
• Davis, A. (2003). Are prisons obsolete? Seven Stories Press. 
• Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage Books.
• Gilmore, R. W. (2022). Abolition geography: Essays towards liberation. Verso Books.
• Gilmore, R.W. (2007). Golden Gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California. University of California Press. 
• Kaba, M. (2021). We do this ‘til we free us: Abolitionist organizing and transforming justice. Haymarket Books.
• Kaba, M. and Ritchie, A. (2022). No more police: A case for abolition. The New Press.
• Martensen, K.M. & Richie, B.E. (2021). Prison abolition. Oxford Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.625
• Montford, K. & Taylor, C. (Eds.). (2021). Building abolition: Decarceration and social justice. Routledge.
• Morris, M. (1976). Instead of prisons: A handbook for abolitionists. Prison Research Education Action Project.
• Purnelle, D. (2021). Becoming abolitionists: Police, protests, and the pursuit of freedom. Astra Press.
• Richie, B.E. (2012). Arrested justice: Black women, violence, and America’s prison nation. New York University Press.
• Ricordeau, G. (2023). Free them all: A feminist call to abolish the prison system. Verso Press.
• Rodríguez, D. (2006). Forced passages: Imprisoned radical intellectuals and the US prison regime. University of Minnesota Press.
• Schenwar, M., & Law, V. (2020). Prison by any other name: The harmful consequences of popular reforms. The New Press.
• Thuma, E. L. (2019). All our trials: Prisons, policing, and the feminist fight to end violence. University of Illinois Press.
• Vitale, A.S. (2017). The end of policing. London: Verso Press.