Abolition Strategy: Dismantling Prisons and State Violence

Introduction

Prisons are not failures of justice. They are its logical conclusion.

Every cage is a confession. It tells you that a society has chosen punishment over repair, control over care, exclusion over transformation. The modern justice system presents itself as neutral and inevitable, but it is neither. It is a machine designed to preserve property relations, political hierarchy, and social obedience. Those who rebel against exploitation are branded criminals. Those who suffer inside the system are forgotten or deliberately erased.

Political prisoners make this contradiction visible. When anarchists in Belarus are tortured for resisting dictatorship, when anti fascists in Russia disappear into penal colonies, when Kurdish activists or antifascists in Europe are prosecuted as terrorists, the mask slips. Repression reveals itself not as an accident but as policy.

The strategic question is no longer whether prisons are violent. It is how movements can dismantle the underlying structures of justice and policing that sustain them, while protecting those who pay the highest price for resistance.

The answer is not a single tactic. It is a choreography. Movements must wage a two front insurgency: disrupt the supply chains and legitimacy of repression while simultaneously building abolitionist alternatives that embody freedom now. Direct action without construction burns out. Community building without confrontation is absorbed. Only their fusion generates structural change.

If you want to abolish prisons, you must starve the machine and seed the future at the same time.

Exposing and Disrupting the Supply Chains of Repression

The prison is not an isolated building. It is the endpoint of a vast logistical ecosystem. Tear gas does not materialize from thin air. Surveillance software does not code itself. Riot police do not train in a vacuum. Every baton, every biometric scanner, every armored vehicle sits within a web of contracts, investors, insurers, universities, and politicians.

To dismantle systemic justice, you must map the ecosystem.

Follow the Money, Not the Myth

The justice system survives on the myth of public safety. But its operational logic is financial. Private contractors build prisons. Pension funds invest in security firms. Insurance companies underwrite weapons manufacturers. Universities patent crowd control technology. Police departments attend international training exchanges to refine the handling of mass events.

In Germany, for example, documented cooperation between police forces and authoritarian regimes in crowd control training exposes a global marketplace of repression. The lesson is clear. State violence is transnational. Solidarity must be as well.

Divestment campaigns are not symbolic. They attack the bloodstream of the carceral state. When you pressure a city pension fund to dump shares in a prison contractor, you are not pleading for reform. You are forcing an institutional actor to choose between profit and legitimacy.

Yet most divestment campaigns fail because they treat exposure as the endpoint. Exposure is only the ignition.

Design Chain Reactions, Not One Off Scandals

Treat protest like applied chemistry. Identify volatile elements and combine them at the right temperature.

A supply chain disruption campaign can follow a cascading sequence:

1. Investigate and publish clear evidence linking a respected institution to repression.
2. Stage a creative public intervention that dramatizes this complicity at a moment of maximum visibility, such as a shareholder meeting or academic conference.
3. Offer a concrete off ramp, divestment, contract cancellation, public renunciation.
4. Pair the demand with a moral narrative centered on political prisoners and victims of state violence.

When the first defection occurs, amplify it relentlessly. Authority fears precedent more than protest. A single pension fund divesting can destabilize confidence across the sector.

Count defections, not attendance. A warden who resigns. A supplier who withdraws. A training program canceled. These are falling bricks. When you measure success by sovereignty gained, not heads counted, your strategy sharpens.

Surprise Restores Leverage

The more predictable your protest, the easier it is to crush. Annual rallies outside prisons have value, but they rarely disturb the system. Surprise opens cracks in the facade.

Consider the Quebec casseroles of 2012. Night after night, citizens banged pots and pans from their balconies against tuition hikes. The tactic diffused block by block, impossible to police without absurdity. Sound became solidarity. Participation required no central organization.

What would the sonic equivalent be for prison abolition? Perhaps synchronized noise at the headquarters of prison insurers across multiple cities. Perhaps a coordinated digital blockade that overwhelms the investor relations departments of security firms with calls and emails demanding divestment.

The principle is simple. Act faster than institutions can coordinate. Crest and vanish before repression hardens. Use bursts and lulls. One lunar cycle of intense disruption, followed by a strategic pause to consolidate gains and protect participants.

Disruption alone, however, is insufficient. If you only attack the system, you risk confirming the narrative that chaos is worse than cages. To dismantle prisons, you must demonstrate that another form of justice is not utopian fantasy but lived practice.

Building Abolitionist Alternatives and Parallel Sovereignty

Prison abolition will not win by moral argument alone. It will win when communities experience safety and accountability without police and cages.

This requires more than protest. It requires sovereignty redesign.

From Petition to Self Rule

Most activism operates in a petitioning mode. We ask the state to change its policies. But the state exists to preserve its monopoly on force. Asking it to abolish its own tools is structurally naive.

Instead, movements must build parallel authority. Community councils that mediate conflicts. Transformative justice pods that address harm without incarceration. Tenant unions that prevent eviction without calling police. Street medic networks that replace the police ambulance tandem.

These initiatives are not charity. They are rehearsals for a post carceral society.

History offers precedent. During the Paris Commune of 1871, workers attempted to reorganize urban governance around popular assemblies. Though crushed after 73 days, the Commune demonstrated that governance can be reimagined rapidly when the old order fractures.

More recently, Indigenous blockades during the Oka Crisis in 1990 combined land defense with the assertion of sovereign authority. The blockade was not only resistance. It was a declaration of jurisdiction.

The lesson is clear. Every protest should hide a shadow government waiting to emerge.

Publish the Results

A common weakness of abolitionist experiments is invisibility. Transformative justice processes occur quietly. Community mediation happens off camera. Meanwhile, the state publicizes every arrest as proof of necessity.

You must reverse the optics.

Document outcomes. Publish anonymized case studies. Track recidivism compared to traditional sentencing. Invite journalists and skeptics to observe restorative circles. Show that rehabilitation is not rhetoric but measurable reality.

Of all the functions prison advocates cite, rehabilitation is the one in which they fail most consistently. High rates of reoffending, social isolation, unemployment, and stigma after release reveal that cages do not heal. They harden.

If your community based alternative can demonstrate lower rates of repeat harm, stronger reintegration, and higher satisfaction among victims, you are not merely critiquing prisons. You are rendering them obsolete.

Fuse Disruption and Construction

The most potent strategy is to choreograph opposition and creation.

Imagine this sequence. A city announces divestment from a prison contractor after sustained activist pressure. On the same day, a public assembly allocates funds to expand neighborhood justice councils. Cameras capture the exchange. Spectators witness money flowing out of repression and into repair.

Opposition instantly births construction. The narrative shifts from anger to possibility.

Movements that win rarely look like they should. They combine elements from different strategic lenses. Voluntarist mass action to generate pressure. Structural awareness to time campaigns when crises peak. Subjective narrative work to shift imagination. Sometimes even ritual and spirituality to deepen commitment.

Standing Rock fused ceremony with pipeline blockade. Theurgic prayer camps coexisted with legal and physical resistance. That fusion amplified resonance.

Prison abolition must do the same. It must operate on material, narrative, and spiritual planes simultaneously.

Protecting Political Prisoners and Activists Under Repression

Abolition strategy cannot ignore those already inside the cages. Solidarity is not sentimental. It is structural.

Political prisoners serve as both warning and beacon. The state punishes them to deter others. Movements honor them to signal that repression will not isolate.

Visibility as Shield

Authoritarian regimes depend on silence. Torture thrives in darkness. International attention can raise the cost of abuse.

Organize coordinated visibility storms. Birthdays of imprisoned activists become global days of action. Embassies receive synchronized delegations. Social media floods with names and stories. Each action communicates a simple message: you are watched.

When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia in 2010, digital witness transformed personal despair into regional uprising. Visibility cascaded. Repression was exposed in real time.

For political prisoners in Belarus or Russia, encrypted communication networks, diaspora safe harbors, and legal defense funds form the infrastructure of survival. Security culture must be normalized, not stigmatized. Digital hygiene workshops. Rotating spokespersons. Clear protocols for arrest support.

Psychological protection matters as much as legal aid. Viral peaks of attention often collapse into burnout. After intense campaigns, schedule decompression rituals. Collective care prevents despair from mutating into nihilism or reckless escalation.

Smuggle Ideas, Not Only Letters

Letter writing campaigns sustain morale. But solidarity can evolve further.

Create collaborative think tanks that include imprisoned comrades as co authors. Publish essays, policy proposals, and strategic reflections drafted inside prison walls. Force legislators and media to confront abolitionist thought authored by those the system deems irredeemable.

The moral dissonance is powerful. If a prisoner can articulate coherent visions of justice while the system offers only punishment, legitimacy shifts.

Count defections again. A prison guard who questions orders. A judge who cites restorative justice. A shareholder who resigns in protest. These cracks signal structural fatigue.

Internationalism Without Naivety

Solidarity across borders must avoid romanticization. Not every imprisoned activist shares identical politics. Some movements contain contradictions. Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus and Putin’s in Russia reveal how authoritarian systems can cooperate despite tension. Geopolitics is complex.

Support must be principled and discerning. Defend freedom of expression and association without collapsing into state propaganda on any side. Anti national solidarity means refusing to let governments instrumentalize human rights for strategic advantage.

When you challenge systemic justice at home while condemning repression abroad, you prevent hypocrisy from eroding credibility.

Changing the Narrative of Justice Itself

Even if you disrupt supply chains and build alternatives, abolition will stall if the public imagination remains captive to fear.

The carceral state survives because people believe that cages equal safety. You must target the shared imagination.

Safety Is a Story

Ask a simple question at every forum: does prison make us safer?

Present data on recidivism. Highlight cases where restorative processes reduced harm. Elevate survivors who prefer repair to revenge. Expose how marginalized communities experience over policing and under protection simultaneously.

The justice system claims to act in the name of victims while rarely repairing their losses. It answers violence with counter violence. Abolition reframes justice as restoration, accountability, and transformation.

Epiphany mobilizes faster than statistics. Design public rituals that dramatize the possibility of forgiveness and accountability without cages. Community truth telling events. Public apologies. Ceremonies marking successful reintegration.

Such gestures, when authentic, can detonate the routines that fossilize society.

Abandon Obsolete Scripts

Large marches against prisons have symbolic value, but scale alone no longer compels power. The global anti Iraq war protests in February 2003 mobilized millions across 600 cities. The invasion proceeded regardless.

Mass size without structural leverage is obsolete.

Instead of repeating inherited rituals, experiment. Silent vigils outside courthouses combined with coordinated investor pressure. Flash mobs at security technology expos. Digital tools that allow citizens to track police misconduct in real time.

Innovate or evaporate. Authority co opts or crushes any tactic it understands.

The future of abolition will likely involve new sovereignties bootstrapped out of failure. Community currencies that fund mutual aid when repression intensifies. Cooperative housing models that reduce reliance on policing. Digital platforms that coordinate rapid response to arrests.

The only future worth fighting for is the one nobody has fully imagined yet.

Putting Theory Into Practice

To operationalize an abolition strategy that dismantles prisons and sustains solidarity, consider these concrete steps:

• Map the repression ecosystem locally. Identify prison contractors, police suppliers, training exchanges, insurers, and investors in your region. Publish a clear, accessible report linking institutions to specific harms.

• Design a synchronized disruption and reinvestment campaign. Pair a divestment or contract cancellation demand with the launch or expansion of a community based justice alternative. Make the transfer of resources visible and celebratory.

• Institutionalize political prisoner support. Create a permanent working group responsible for encrypted communication, legal defense fundraising, international visibility days, and family support. Treat solidarity as infrastructure, not event.

• Measure sovereignty gained. Track defections, policy shifts, funds redirected, and community conflicts resolved without police. Publish quarterly updates to demonstrate momentum.

• Protect the psyche of your movement. After intense actions, hold structured debriefs and decompression rituals. Rotate leadership roles to prevent burnout and vulnerability to repression.

• Experiment with new protest forms. Retire tactics once they become predictable. Test sonic, digital, artistic, and ritual interventions that surprise institutions and invite broad participation.

These steps will not abolish prisons overnight. But they create a feedback loop in which disruption fuels construction and construction legitimizes disruption.

Conclusion

Challenging systemic justice and policing requires more than denunciation. It requires strategy grounded in reality and animated by imagination.

Prisons are sustained by money, legitimacy, and fear. Starve the money through targeted divestment and supply chain disruption. Undermine legitimacy by exposing complicity and elevating the voices of political prisoners. Dissolve fear by building tangible alternatives that demonstrate safety without cages.

Direct action without community building exhausts itself. Community building without confrontation is absorbed. Their fusion is the chemistry of change.

History shows that uprisings can erupt suddenly, from Paris in 1871 to Tunis in 2010. But what determines whether they fade or transform society is the presence of organized alternatives ready to assume authority. Every protest should conceal a parallel institution prepared to emerge.

If you want to dismantle prisons and state violence, stop asking the system to behave differently. Begin constructing a world where it is unnecessary.

The wall will not fall because you shout at it. It will fall when enough bricks are removed, enough guards defect, enough communities refuse to rely on it.

Which brick is within your reach right now, and what new structure will you build with it?