Building Capacity to End Criminalization, Policing, and Punishment

Interrupting Criminalization (IC) offers political education materials, organizing tools, support skill-building and practice spaces for organizers and movements challenging criminalization and the violence of policing and punishment to build safer communities.

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About

We are a movement resource hub offering research, connection, learning, and practice for organizers, practitioners, and advocates on the cutting edge of efforts to build a world free of violence, surveillance, policing, and punishment.

The Crisis of Criminalization

Over 10 million arrests take place across the country annually, two million people are incarcerated, and four million people are currently, on probation, parole or otherwise under the control of the criminal legal system without being incarcerated.

Black and Indigenous women and girls make up an increasing proportion of people arrested, are the fastest growing prison and jail populations, make up a significant proportion of people on probation and parole, and are targets for surveillance and punishment in every institution they interact with.

These daunting statistics reflect a growing crisis in the United States — not of increasing violent crime, but of an ever-expanding web of criminalization in response to virtually every conflict, harm or need.

Criminalization is what fuels the violence of policing and prisons, detention and deportations, and of family separation — at the border, at the prison gate, in our schools, and by the family policing system. Criminalization is what marks women, girls, trans and gender nonconforming people as targets for sexual violence by police and other carceral actors. Criminalization is also what drives the denial of protection, distribution of trauma, and denial of opportunities to heal, and denial of care and resources — as well as the punishment of self-defense and self-managed care in response to structural exclusion and abandonment.

We’re On A Mission To Ignite Change

Ultimately, the crisis of criminalization is the product of political and policy decisions and daily practices which can and must be challenged. Social movements and their supporters can play a critical role in turning the tide by intervening in the narratives, policies, and process of criminalization.

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We Work To Support The Long Haul Struggle of Abolitionist World-Building

Consultation +
Learning Spaces

Participatory spaces created and designed to support groups and individuals across the country to challenge criminalization.

Cross-Movement Network Building

Catalyzing and convening collaborations across racial, gender, reproductive, economic, and disability justice movements.

Tool Building +
Resource Sharing

A searchable and filterable catalog featuring published books, reports, toolkits, curricula, artwork, and more.

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Consultation + Learning Spaces

Bringing People Together

We create supportive and educational spaces for organizers while coordinating expanded resource sharing and relationship building. These include collaborative learning spaces, individual consultation, and more.

Labor & Abolition Office Hours

Consultation space for practitioners of all kinds looking to strategize about labor’s role in abolition.

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Abolition Media Office Hours

Consultation space for abolitionist journalists, communicators, and media makers to strategize and share skills.

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Transformative Justice Help Desk

Consultation space for groups and individuals working on projects and community-wide interventions to transform harm.

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Beyond Do No Harm

A network working to address the harm caused when health care providers and institutions and public health institutions facilitate, participate in and support criminalization.

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Health Care Strategy Consult

Consultation space for those looking for a thought partner on practical strategies for interrupting criminalization in health care environments.

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Special Projects

Building Liberatory Movements

We create resources and provide learning opportunities and containers for organizers to grapple with big picture questions, strategize together, navigate conflict, and build skills to bring into being the world we want.

Transformative Justice Skill Up

Creating an infrastructure for TJ practices through organizing, community-based skill-up, and the participatory design of a TJ Virtual Hub, which will be launched in 2025.

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Beyond Courts

Exploring why the abolition of the prison-industrial complex necessarily requires abolition of the criminal court system.

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One Million Experiments

Exploring snapshots of community-based projects that expand our ideas about what keeps us safe.

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No More Police

Detailing how and why policing doesn’t stop violence, the many failures of contemporary police reforms, and demands to defund police, divest from policing, and invest in community.

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Building Coordinated Crisis Response

Monthly learning space for groups working to intervene in and respond to crises without police. In 2024, hosted by Just Practice Collaborative.

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Building Your Abolitionist Toolbox

Virtual workshop series that shares everyday resources for a punishment-free world.

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Abolition Imagination Cards

Inviting us to image and dream the future we want, through downloadable and shareable artwork.

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