It is impossible to think about the criminal justice system, without acknowledging how structural racism is embedded into it. While some elected officials have focused on tinkering with the criminal justice system, abolitionists like Mariame Kaba note, “efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century.” Kaba challenges us to ask, “Why do we have no other well-resourced options?”, and steers the conversation toward focusing on community safety. Indeed, a deep understanding of the roots of our nation’s highly racialized and inequitable criminal justice system is necessary, if we are to imagine a more equitable way forward.

The resources in this section call out the origins of structural racism within the criminal justice system, shares the demands and ideas around defunding the police and changing sentencing guidelines, addresses private prisons, and lays out the work that is needed to dismantle the school to prison pipeline. Related content can be found [...]