“Freedom First”: Pursuing Abolition Through Supporting Prisoner Resistance

• In Event: Authoritative Control and Collective Action in State Complexes

Abstract

In an effort to rid U.S. society's insidious reliance upon the
criminal legal system, abolition theory and practice proposes the use of a multi-pronged approach. Some focus on developing restorative infrastructures to deal with harm and to combat the sustained investment in prisons. Others produce counterhegemonic critiques of the repressive penal system and highlight the material cruelties of imprisoning bodies that are disproportionately poor, trans, and/or of color. And still others push for policy reforms to dismantle the system "brick by brick" while holding on to the long-term goal of total abolition. While we encourage these approaches, we want to highlight the importance of the burgeoning prisoner resistance movement in rapidly advancing the project of abolition. We argue that an increasingly ungovernable prison rebel population can create an internal crisis, disrupting the logics and routines of punishment to render prisons unworkable. In our chapter we will examine the strategic value in this approach, the relationships between prisoners and supporters, the creation of robust support networks, and possible outcomes. Abolishing prison on our terms and our timeline can destabilize the status quo by threatening the capitalist, patriarchal and white supremacist order that the prison system upholds.

Authors

• Colleen Hackett, Colorado State University Pueblo

• Ben Turk, Insurgent Theatre