Building an international movement to abolish the prison industrial complex

Abstract

Critical Resistance (CR) is a US-based grassroots group engaged in community organising focused on the goal of abolishing the prison industrial complex (PIC). CR uses the phrase ‘prison industrial complex’ to refer to the intersecting interests of government and industry that employ surveillance, policing, the judiciary, and imprisonment as solutions to what the state identifies as social problems (i.e. poverty, homelessness, ‘social deviance’, political dissent). Rather than understanding the PIC as a broken system, we believe it operates precisely as it has been designed: to contain, control, and kill exactly the people it targets, including poor people, people of colour, queer and gender queer people, youth, immigrants, and political dissidents. As such, we do not advocate for reforms dedicated to improving this well-oiled machine, but advocate for a complete elimination of the prison industrial complex.