Abolition Now!: Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex

“As new and more virulent articulations of imprisonment, policing, and surveillance have grown over the past decade, one thing remains clear: the prison industrial complex must be abolished. Critical Resistance is a leading voice in the movement for abolition and the pieces in this collection are powerful tools for both long-time activists and those brand new to the movement for abolition now!”—Angela Y. Davis, author of Are Prisons Obsolete?

The number of people in prison in the United States has risen 400 percent in the last twenty years—the world’s highest incarceration rate. Over seven million people currently live under the control of US jail, prison, probation, or parole systems—the vast majority of them people of color and young people. Policing at all levels is increasingly militarized and demands more and more resources.

For a decade, Critical Resistance has organized to abolish the reliance on imprisonment, policing, and surveillance, seeing the prison industrial complex (PIC) not as a broken system to be fixed, but a well-oiled machine that must be eliminated entirely.

Published in honor of Critical Resistance’s tenth anniversary, Abolition Now! reflects the organization’s themes: Dismantle, Change, and Build. It presents bold strategies to create a stronger movement of people committed to PIC abolition and building stronger, safer, healthier communities, not more elaborate forms of repression.

The CR10 Publications Collective is a national grassroots organization with thousands of members and supporters working toward reducing the current prison population, stopping construction of new prisons, and developing alternative public safety models.

Critical Resistance is a national grassroots organization with thousands of members and supporters working toward reducing the current prison population, stopping construction of new prisons, and developing alternative public safety models. They produce two prisoner newsletters and a radio program, and have released four documentaries and two books: Instead of Prisons and Critical Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex.