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by Community Justice Exchange (Author), Interrupting Criminalization (Author), Critical Resistance (Author)
A timely primer for understanding and resisting systems of punishment and reimagining a world beyond them. Beyond Criminal Courts is a collection of resources created for organizers, advocates and community members working together to build the organizing-power we need to defund, divest, and ultimately to dismantle criminal courts for good.
Beyond Criminal Courts invites readers to learn about criminal court processes and to deepen an abolitionist analysis and critique of criminal courts. It also offers a vision for alternative ways of investigating, evaluating and adjudicating harm, and presents ideas for organizing to build power to ultimately defund and dismantle criminal courts. With accessible, clear explanations of how systems of oppression intersect in the criminal court system and dynamic illustrations throughout, Beyond Criminal Courts invites readers not only to question the criminal injustice system but organize to dismantle it.Author Biography
Community Justice Exchange develops, shares and experiments with tactical interventions, strategic organizing practices, and innovative organizing tools to end all forms of criminalization, incarceration, surveillance, supervision, and detention. CJE provides support to community-based organizations across the country that are experimenting with bottom-up interventions that contest the current operation and function of the criminal legal and immigration detention systems. CJE produces tools and resources for organizers to creatively tackle multiple drivers of criminalization and incarceration.
Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. CR believes that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure. As such, CR's work is part of global struggles against inequality and powerlessness. The success of the movement requires that it reflect communities most affected by the PIC. Critical Resistance is a national grassroots organization with members across the United States while primarily organizing through local chapters. Interrupting Criminalization is a movement resource hub offering information, cross-movement networks, learning, and practice for organizers, practitioners, and advocates on the cutting edge of efforts to build a world free of criminalization, policing, punishment, and violence. Led by veteran Black feminist abolitionist organizers Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie, IC creates resources, develops containers, and weaves cross-movement networks, building capacity for and with organizers and advocates working to end the growing criminalization and incarceration of women, LGBTQ, trans, and gender non-conforming people of color.
