Reimagining Justice: A Primer on Defunding the Police and Prison Abolition

Grassroots groups around Chicago are already putting abolitionist ideas into practice.

In three decades of advocating for prison abolition, the activist and scholar has helped transform how people think about criminal justice.

Prison abolitionists aren’t naive dreamers. They’re organizing for concrete reforms, animated by a radical critique of state violence.

Felons, illegals, and the case for a new abolition movement.

A conversation between Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez.

Over the last 30 years, at both the national and local levels, governments have dramatically increased their spending on criminalization, policing, and mass incarceration while drastically cutting investments in basic infrastructure and slowing investment in social safety net programs.

Prison and police abolition were key to the thinking of many midcentury civil rights activists. Understanding why can help us ask for change in our own time.

Black people’s citizenship remains tethered to whether or not white people feel “safe” around them.

Past budget cuts have had unintended consequences. Now, proponents say it’s time to fundamentally reimagine the role of the police.

Redirect it to emergency response programs that don’t kill Black people.

As cases of police abuse and misconduct gain attention, activists have moved beyond calls for reform to advocate for the abolition of police. It’s a controversial and widely misunderstood idea. How would police abolition work, exactly? How would we protect public safety? Radical Imagination host Angela Glover Blackwell explores these questions with humanitarian hip-hop artist Jessica Disu, a.k.a. FM Supreme, who has publicly called for police abolition.

Josie and Clint discuss prison abolition with Mariame Kaba, one of the leading organizers in the fight against America’s criminal legal system and a contributing editor for The Appeal. Mariame discusses her own journey into this work, provides perspective on the leaders in this space, and helps us reimagine what the future of this system could look like.

A cross-generational group of leading scholars, activists, and incarcerated women lead discussions on the rich tradition of activism and social theory in the late 20th century using the life and work of the political activist and pioneering philosopher Angela Davis.

A comprehensive road map for understanding how we have arrived at the present political moment of brutality and rebellion.