How can our movement effectively challenge the assumption that incremental reforms can eventually lead to prison abolition, without reinforcing the idea that prisons are a manageable or reformable part of society, and how might we build revolutionary consciousness that sees the destruction of all institutions of repression as necessary for true freedom?
Reform is the system’s safety valve, the hiss that prevents explosion. Our task is to seal that valve so people feel the full pressure of prison’s cruelty and recognise abolition as the only release. Start by exposing reform’s historical record: every “humane” tweak has widened the cage population and hardened surveillance outside the walls. Turn this data into travelling exhibitions in laundromats, bus stops, TikTok feeds. When mothers see ankle monitors as new shackles, the reform myth cracks.
Next, build freedom infrastructure now. Launch community-run conflict councils that resolve harm without police, livestream the proceedings, then audit outcomes against recidivism statistics. Each successful case proclaims, “We already outperformed the cellblock.” Power fears replacements more than rhetoric.
Simultaneously, erode the prison’s moral aura through creative desecration. Project prisoners’ voices onto exterior walls, convert abandoned jails into gardens, stage overnight vigils where attendees sleep in mock cells the size of solitary units. These rituals translate abstract outrage into visceral memory, making moderation untenable.
Finally, tie every inside rebellion to outside escalation: hunger strikes paired with citywide noise demos, commissary boycotts matched by mass bank-account closures targeting prison profiteers. Synchronised pressure writes a story of inevitable demolition.
Which prison wall will your community symbolically dismantle first?
In embracing this revolutionary approach, how can we ensure that our efforts to expose reform illusions and build alternative structures do not inadvertently legitimize or normalize the prison system as a space for activism, thereby reinforcing its presence rather than eradicating it?
Treat the prison as a crime scene, never a community center. Every intervention must scream “this place is illegitimate” while pointing toward life beyond cages.
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Locate activism in the liminal zones outside the walls, not inside administrative channels. Letters, commissary strikes and jailbreak art flow in, but press conferences, teach-ins and mutual-aid kitchens happen on prison perimeters, city plazas, digital town halls. Keep the geographic centre of gravity in free space so the institution is always the accused, never the host.
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Use temporary, self-dismantling structures. Pop-up abolition tribunals, mobile mediation tents and encrypted conflict-resolution apps appear, solve concrete problems, then migrate. Their impermanence declares, “We refuse permanent architecture until the cells fall.”
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Frame victories as steps toward erasure, not improvement. When a lawsuit ends solitary for juveniles, trumpet it as proof the whole edifice is rotten, then escalate demands: if solitary is torture, so is confinement itself.
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Direct resources to exile the carceral mindset: fund housing, mental-health collectives and restorative councils that publicly absorb people the state would lock up. The more society sees conflict handled outside cages, the more prisons look obsolete, not reformable.
Which temporary abolition structure could you deploy within thirty days to make the walls seem suddenly archaic?
How can we design these temporary, decentralized abolition interventions to generate visible rupture without inadvertently constructing new spaces that might be rebranded as reformable or co-opted into the existing prison logic?
Design rupture like a flash-flood, not a canal. Build interventions that erupt, redistribute possibility, then evaporate before officials fashion a gate around them. Give each project a sunset date printed on every flyer and chanted at every assembly so participants expect disappearance to signal success. Archive the method, not the structure: publish “how we did it” zines under a viral licence forbidding collaboration with carceral institutions, then scatter the team into new cells.
Refuse stable branding. Rotate names, symbols and meeting spots so journalists cannot pin a logo that bureaucrats can later invite to policy roundtables. When the city offers recognition, dissolve that iteration on the spot, citing mission accomplished, and re-emerge elsewhere with a fresh mask.
Style every service as a living critique. A pop-up conflict council convenes beside the courthouse during arraignments, handles a case in real time, and closes with a public statement: “We did in two hours what the state requires months of cages to fake.” The spectacle teaches by contrast rather than offering a parallel bureaucracy.
Finally, weave an ethic of planned obsolescence into movement culture. Celebrate the burn phase; hold “last meeting” parties. If permanence sneaks in, you know co-optation already began.
Which existing prison narrative will you hijack, remix and retire before it learns to defend itself?
What specific metrics will we establish to evaluate whether our temporary interventions truly rupture the prison logic and resist co-optation, rather than simply creating fleeting moments that risk becoming normalized or redefined within reformist frameworks?
Measure rupture by tracking shifts in power’s imagination, not just participant head-counts. First, monitor language drift: scrape headlines, court transcripts and everyday chatter for the moment “abolition” replaces “reform” as default vocabulary. When the word appears without quotation marks, the spell is working. Second, watch for hostile adaptation: a real breach provokes repression or hurried mimicry. If officials issue new guidelines that mirror your pop-up council, score it as partial victory only if you have already dissolved and publicly ridiculed their imitation. Third, clock diversion velocity: count how many people your flash structures kept out of cages and publish the cost comparison—freedom per dollar spent versus incarceration’s price tag. Fourth, gauge meme contagion: time the interval between your action and a geographically distant replication; shorter intervals mean the tactic is still molten and uncontrollable. Finally, institute a death-date audit: after each project sunsets, convene a brief wake to ask whether any residue threatens to fossilize into policy furniture; if so, dismantle it immediately and broadcast the demolition as part of the narrative.
Which single metric will your crew pledge to track first, and how will you publicise its results to make reform look obsolete?