ABSTRACT
This chapter starts by providing a brief outline of the development of the US grassroots abolitionist organization Critical Resistance and its articulation of the concepts of the prison industrial complex and abolition. The chapter then moves on to critique liberal reform and differentiate abolitionist non-reformist reforms from reformist reforms, explaining how “abolitionist reforms” aim to strip away power and legitimacy from the systems of policing, imprisonment, surveillance, and the rest of the prison industrial complex. The chapter concludes by highlighting “seven steps to abolition” proposed by Critical Resistance.
