Know Your Abolition

March 5, 2026

Abolish the police! Abolish ICE! Abolish the prison! We have so much on our collective “to-abolish list” at the moment it can be hard to keep things straight. This refresher will help you know the difference between various types of abolition efforts.

PRISON ABOLITION

What People Think It Is: Total chaos, no accountability

Most Common Response: “Oh you’re just going to let all the thieves and murderers out, huh?”

What It Really Is: Calls for prison abolition arise from a belief that the criminal legal system has failed, cannot be reformed, and must be abolished. Prison abolitionists see the prison itself as a component part of a much larger prison industrial complex incorporating the police, legislatures, and courts — all of which reflect the inequality of the society they represent. Prison abolition is different from prison reform. To the prison abolitionist, merely reforming the existing criminal system does not go far enough to address the harms of the prison system. Prison abolitionists imagine a world where our legal systems and institutions actually fulfill their promise of an ordered, safer world.

Mass incarceration, a phenomenon that has only been increasing in the U.S. over the decades, is the focal point of much abolitionist action. Prison abolitionists reject the warehousing of humans as a public safety strategy. Prison abolitionists frequently argue that different approaches to public safety are needed, particularly the demilitarization of the police and implementation of restorative justice practices.

Overall, prison abolition as a radical concept is a blanket critique of the police, courts, and prisons that presently hold a monopoly on the criminal legal system. Prison abolitionists look at the results of the present era of mass incarceration and conclude that we can do a lot better.

ABOLISH/DEFUND THE POLICE

What People Think It Is: No cops, all robbers

Most Common Response: “So what you’re telling me is you want to fire all the cops and let the criminals run the town?”

What It Really Is: The efforts to defund/abolish police are similar to the prison abolitionist movement in that they both levy critiques against the police and the practice of policing; however, they differ in important ways. Where prison abolition is a broad-spectrum approach to criminal justice at large, police abolition is more focused on the nuts and bolts of what police actually do. In this way, police abolition is far more policy-focused than prison abolition movements.

Police abolitionists are highly critical of the police as a one-size-fits-all solution to problems ranging from the classic cat stuck in a tree, to mental health emergencies, to bank robberies. Police can be lethal in the community, are generally under-trained for mental health emergencies, and usually possess an adversarial mentality regarding the communities they serve. Add to that the increased militarization that followed the flow of equipment returning from the Iraq war, and a picture of the police as an occupying force in their own communities begins to develop. For an example of this, check to see if your town has access to a tank, then ask yourself, why is there a tank in your town? What are the police actually doing with all this stuff? And why can’t they solve crimes?

Police abolitionists look at this and conclude that the problem is the police as an institution. They are underequipped to deal with real problems like addiction and domestic violence, and overequipped to suppress dissent and stifle free speech. Police abolitionists/defunders want to see new institutions formed – for example, a crisis response team that helps deescalate an agitated person, instead of a militaristic response by armed officers. Social workers and housing advocates who respond to homeless encampments instead of sweeps is another example. Advocates believe that creating more specialized departments that focus on providing for human need rather than responding to all situations with violence will result in safer communities, fewer deaths, and less crime. Police abolition is about providing for public safety in a smarter, more balanced manner.

ABOLISH ICE/DHS

What People Think It Is: Totally open borders, immigrants are going to take over your town and take your job!

Most Common Response: “We can’t just let people in the country with no process because, uhhh, reasons!”

What It Actually Is: Recent events across the country – particularly in Minneapolis – have put ICE, a major agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) umbrella, in the public eye. Their murderous rampage speaks for itself, and public opposition to it needs no explanation, but what to do about it? Most democrats have nervously wrung their hands as they try to dance around the “A” word, but it has become clear to any rational observer that the problem runs much deeper than this particular operation; it flows from the agency itself.

As a refresher, it’s worth remembering that DHS was created in 2002. Some of us are still wearing t-shirts older than DHS. The agency hasn’t been around that long and it can go as easily as it came. DHS is one of the largest, most complex government agencies, with a mandate spanning dozens of topics. It was criticized at the time of its creation for the risk of becoming an unaccountable behemoth, and the warnings were well-placed.

ICE and Customs & Border Protection (CBP), the two agencies under DHS responsible for the majority of immigration removals, have become rogue, unaccountable departments. As such, in addition to being a major force of social repression, they are also failing to coherently address immigration, setting nearly impossible legal barriers for all those who cannot buy their way into a corrupt process. This makes no sense and is beneath us all as coherent policy. The abolition of DHS does not mean the total cessation of all activities that DHS engages in, but it does mean those priorities would be restructured in a way that makes at minimum at least some common sense.

The abolition of ICE and DHS does not mean the end of all immigration enforcement. It means transitioning into a system that centers respect for the rights of immigrants and the basic humanity of all, two things DHS currently does not provide.

Bottom Line: What unites all of these abolition movements is a shared recognition that the institutions we have are not inevitable – they were built to be this way (on purpose), and they can be rebuilt. Prison abolition, police abolition, and the abolition of ICE and DHS are not calls for chaos; they are calls for accountability, radical imagination, and the drive to create systems that actually work for people. We cannot afford to remain stagnant – we’re well past time to reimagine public safety and human dignity. Those on the front lines of these movements – abolitionists who put their bodies between their communities they’re standing up for and the imminent violence of law enforcement and ICE – face arrest, prosecution, and incarceration for their courage to act. Not everyone has the ability to be that brave, but there are other ways to get involved. Support CLDC’s Activist Defense Fund to ensure that when activists are targeted for asking our government to do what it’s supposed to – take care of its people – they have the legal defense they need and deserve.

Citations:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/06/19/the-case-for-abolition

https://sites.tufts.edu/prisondivestment/the-pic-and-mass-incarceration/

https://www.justice.gov/archives/prison-reform

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/nine_perspectives.shtml

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/06/13/what-do-abolitionists-really-want

https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/abolition1313/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-3-13-on-police-abolition/

https://theconversation.com/why-do-american-cops-kill-so-many-compared-to-european-cops-49696

https://themainemonitor.org/police-mental-health-training-lags/

https://www.thetrace.org/2020/06/warrior-cop-mentality-police-industry/

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1805161115