ABSTRACT
The Politics of Abolition was published in 1974; it finally made accessible a strategy for action on prisons that looked beyond the usual demands for reform, based on criticism of the treatment of inmates. Five years later, in 1979, there followed a German version -Uberwindet die Mauern, that facilitated the reception and discussion of the Scandinavian prison movement's abolitionist strategy in West Germany. There can be no doubt that The Politics of Abolition and its German counterpart stimulated discussion of criminal sociology and criminal policy in West Germany. In its heyday, up to the mid-1980s, KRAK was probably the most ambitious attempt to put the Nordic fringe groups' experience to work on West German criminal policy. The starting point for the organisation was AG SPAK, an umbrella organisation for fringe groups, which offered an organisational platform for a whole range of related initiatives and individual campaigns.
