Images courtesy of Peter Mertz for Artistic Ensemble
Welcome!
As national support for justice reform grows, more people understand that we can’t incarcerate our way to a safe society. With that wisdom, more people have imagined a world without prisons.
Prison abolition. A lot is said and misunderstood about prison abolition. What it is not for Prison Renaissance: a call to close all prisons and release all incarcerated people tomorrow. What abolition is for Prison Renaissance: a call to identify then build the institutions and strategies we need in order to close all prisons and release all incarcerated people.
Some institutions that have already been identified by others include Transformative Justice, alternatives to incarceration, and healthy communities. Some strategies include decriminalization, Emergent Strategy, and Black/Queer feminism.
Prison Renaissance was co-founded by three incarcerated people who identified the need for a new institution to support abolition: prison programs that don’t involve prison administrators. We need prison programs that contribute to making prisons obsolete, and prison programs will never do that as long as prison administrators control them.
Help us take the “prison” out of prison programs.
