Abolitionist Futures: Building Social Justice Not Criminal Justice

In summer 2018, London (UK) will host an international gathering of those working for social justice in place of criminal justice.

Over four days there will be opportunities to organise and participate in activities and workshops that seek to build and strengthen local and international movements for social justice and penal abolition.

• Friday 15 June: A public evening event, open to the public.
• Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 June: Workshops, presentations, film screenings and other contributions.
• Monday 18 June: Symposium for academic papers focused on ‘what can academics do to support movement organising?’

Themes

The conference programme will focus on

• strategies and solutions for addressing the harms of policing, prisons, immigration detention and punishment
• addressing the broader systems of oppression that maintain the prison industrial complex

There will be four conference streams;

1. QUESTIONING: This stream will provide introductory workshops for those who are new to abolitionist ideas.
2. RESISTING: This stream will reflect on every day forms of individual and collective resistance to the prison industrial complex.
3. DISMANTLING: This stream will discuss and debate concrete strategies and tactics for dismantling criminal justice and undoing social norms that feed systems of captivity and punishment.
4. BUILDING: This stream will explore social justice alternatives to prisons, police, detention and criminal justice institutions.

We encourage sessions that make links between penal abolition and wider struggles for housing, health, education, and environment; and for economic, racial, gender, sexual and disability justice.