Ten Ways to Strike at the Carceral State — Starting Today
Photo: Evgeny2665, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Abolition Is a Verb
The word "abolition" often conjures a distant horizon — a world so transformed from the present that it feels more like aspiration than strategy. But the abolitionists who dismantled chattel slavery in the nineteenth century did not begin with a completed blueprint. They began with the next available action: sheltering a freedom seeker, writing a pamphlet, organizing a boycott of slave-produced goods. The horizon was built from accumulated present-tense choices.
The same logic applies today. Dismantling the carceral state — a system that incarcerates more than two million people, extracts billions in profit for private corporations, and devastates communities of color across every zip code in this country — is not a single campaign. It is a sustained project requiring action at every scale simultaneously. What follows is a practical map of that project, organized for immediate use.
1. Contribute to and Advocate for Bail Funds
Pretrial detention is one of the carceral system's most brutal tools. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people sit in jail not because they have been convicted of anything, but simply because they cannot afford bail. This coercion drives guilty pleas from innocent people and tears families apart.
Bail funds provide direct, immediate liberation. Organizations such as the National Bail Fund Network (nationalbailfund.org) maintain a directory of local bail funds in every state. Contributing financially is powerful. Volunteering to conduct jail support, court watching, or know-your-rights trainings amplifies that impact further. Advocate to your city council and state legislature for the elimination of cash bail entirely — New Jersey and Illinois have already enacted significant reforms that demonstrate the political feasibility of this demand.
Measure your impact: Track the number of individuals released through funds you've supported and follow pretrial reform legislation in your state legislature.
2. Divest Your Institution from Private Prison Corporations
The private prison industry — dominated by corporations such as GEO Group and CoreCivic — generates profit by maximizing incarceration. Universities, pension funds, and municipal governments hold significant investment portfolios that frequently include these companies. Divestment campaigns strip these corporations of capital and legitimacy simultaneously.
Join or launch a divestment campaign at your university, union, or faith institution. Worth Rises (worthrises.org) publishes an annual Corporate Prison Industry Index identifying every company profiting from mass incarceration, providing the research foundation your campaign needs. Connect with In the Public Interest for model divestment resolutions and legislative templates.
Measure your impact: Track the total dollar value of divestment commitments secured through your campaign.
3. Support Sentencing Reform Campaigns in Your State
Mandatory minimum sentencing laws, enacted during the so-called War on Drugs, have produced sentences grotesquely disproportionate to any legitimate penological purpose. Reforming these laws is a critical pressure point. Organizations including the Sentencing Project (sentencingproject.org) and FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) track legislation in every state and provide advocacy toolkits tailored to specific campaigns.
Contact your state legislators directly. Attend hearings. Bring directly impacted individuals to testify — their testimony carries political weight that no policy brief can replicate.
Measure your impact: Monitor bill progression through your state legislature and the number of constituent contacts your advocacy generates.
4. Become a Court Watcher
The courtroom is where the carceral system manufactures its outcomes, largely shielded from public scrutiny. Court watching programs place trained community observers in arraignment and sentencing hearings, documenting judicial conduct, prosecutorial behavior, and bail-setting patterns. The data these volunteers collect has driven prosecutorial accountability campaigns across the country.
Court Watch NYC, Chicago Community Bond Fund, and Court Watch NOLA offer models that organizers in other cities can replicate. Many programs provide free training and structured data collection tools. Simply showing up — and being seen — changes the behavior of actors who rely on invisibility.
Measure your impact: Track the number of hearings observed, data points collected, and any policy changes your documentation helps drive.
5. Organize Against Carceral Expansion in Your Community
Jails and prisons are frequently proposed as economic development projects in rural and suburban communities. New construction must be opposed at the planning stage. Attend county commission and city council meetings where jail expansion is on the agenda. Demand environmental impact assessments. Challenge the fiscal projections that jail proponents routinely inflate.
No New Jails NYC and similar local campaigns provide organizing models applicable nationwide. The Vera Institute of Justice (vera.org) publishes research specifically designed to counter the economic arguments made for carceral expansion.
Measure your impact: Track proposed facilities successfully blocked or reduced in scope.
6. Demand the Decriminalization of Poverty
Fines and fees imposed by courts — for everything from traffic violations to public camping — function as a parallel taxation system targeting the poorest Americans. When people cannot pay, they face license suspension, bench warrants, and incarceration, creating cycles of poverty and criminalization that are deliberately self-perpetuating.
Free to Drive (freetodrive.org) coordinates campaigns to end license suspension for unpaid fines in states across the country. The Fines and Fees Justice Center provides state-by-state legislative tracking and model legislation. Locally, advocate for your city to eliminate fees assessed against defendants in the criminal legal system.
Measure your impact: Track fines and fees legislation in your state and the estimated number of people who would benefit from reform.
7. Support Returning Citizens Through Reentry Organizations
The punishment that incarceration inflicts does not end at the prison gate. Formerly incarcerated people face systematic exclusion from housing, employment, education, and civic participation. Addressing these barriers is both a direct service imperative and a political one — dismantling the legal infrastructure of permanent punishment.
Volunteer with or donate to organizations such as Reentry Council affiliates in your state, Starting Over Inc., or local chapters of All of Us or None, an organization led by formerly incarcerated people themselves. Advocate for ban-the-box legislation prohibiting criminal history inquiries in hiring, and for automatic expungement of records for qualifying offenses.
Measure your impact: Track expungement legislation and the number of individuals connected to housing and employment resources.
8. Engage in Electoral Accountability Around Prosecution
District attorneys wield enormous, largely unchecked power over who is charged, how severely, and whether alternatives to prosecution are offered. Electing progressive prosecutors who commit to declining certain charges, ending cash bail requests, and reducing incarceration has proven consequential in cities including Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Beyond electoral cycles, hold incumbent DAs accountable through sustained public pressure. Fair and Just Prosecution (fairandjustprosecution.org) tracks prosecutorial commitments and outcomes nationally. Organize public forums demanding that your local DA articulate specific, measurable decarceration commitments.
Measure your impact: Track your DA's charging decisions, prosecution rates, and incarceration outcomes year over year.
9. Build Political Education Within Your Existing Networks
Abolition requires a broad social consensus that does not yet fully exist. Political education — moving people from vague discomfort with mass incarceration toward a structural analysis — is foundational organizing work. Host reading groups, film screenings, or workshops in your union hall, faith community, neighborhood association, or workplace.
Critical Resistance (criticalresistance.org) offers free educational materials including their Abolitionist Toolkit. The Prison Policy Initiative (prisonpolicy.org) produces accessible data visualizations ideal for introductory audiences. Every person who deepens their analysis becomes a potential organizer.
Measure your impact: Track the number of political education events held and participants engaged over a given period.
10. Connect Local Struggles to National Abolition Infrastructure
Isolated campaigns are more vulnerable than networked ones. Connect your local organizing to national abolitionist infrastructure through organizations such as Survived and Punished, Transformative Justice Law Project, Black and Pink, and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. Share your wins, your data, and your setbacks with the broader movement.
Abolitionist organizing has historically succeeded when local victories are legible to — and reproducible by — communities elsewhere. Document your campaigns carefully. Publish your findings. Show the next city what is possible.
Measure your impact: Track the number of coalition partnerships built and campaigns replicated in other jurisdictions.
The Horizon Is Built From Here
None of these actions is sufficient on its own. Bail funds do not abolish bail. Court watching does not abolish courts. Electing a progressive prosecutor does not abolish prosecution. But each action weakens the architecture of the carceral state, builds organizational capacity, develops political education, and demonstrates — concretely — that another arrangement of social life is achievable.
Abolition is not a destination that awaits us. It is the accumulated weight of every bail paid, every facility blocked, every organizer developed, and every person who walks out of a courthouse into a community that fought to receive them. Start where you are. Use what you have. The work is already underway.
