Interrupting Criminalization is an initiative led by researchers Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie. The project aims to interrupt and end the growing criminalization and incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color for criminalized acts related to public order, poverty, child welfare, drug use, survival and self-defense, including criminalization and incarceration of survivors of violence.
The Help Desk at Interrupting Criminalization
Interrupting Criminalization is launching a Help Desk consultation service for our partners working on projects and community-wide interventions to transform harm.
Latest Publications
In It Together - A Framework for Conflict Transformation In Movement-Building Groups: This toolkit provides provides a step-by-step diagnostic tool to assess conflict in movement-building organizations and groups and provides strategies, tools, and resources to transform that conflict.
Abortion Decriminalization is Part of the Larger Struggle Against Policing and Criminalization: The expanding surveillance and criminalization of bodily autonomy have far-reaching ramifications beyond abortion criminalization. This brief offers an analysis of how our movements are connected, and how to push back against a widening web of criminalization.
Police Responses to Domestic Violence - A Fact Sheet: Survivors want safety and support. Defunding police is a survivor-led anti-violence strategy that stops police from looting resources survivors need to prevent, avoid, escape and heal from violence - and puts more money into violence prevention and interruption, and meeting survivors’ needs.
Navigating Public Safety Task Forces, A Guide From The Ground: This guide from the ground gathers lessons and victories from organizers who called for and engaged with public safety task forces over the past year — and the past decade. It is intended to support communities navigating common questions, taking into account the particular conditions of their own communities.
What About The Rapists? An Abolitionist FAQ: When prison industrial complex abolitionists tell people that they want to abolish police and prisons, they invariably ask, “what about the rapists?” This zine explores brief answers to this question, as well as questions that abolitionists can ask in return.
Combating Narratives Used to Defend Police Instead of Defunding Them: Police are facing one of the greatest crises of legitimacy in a generation. In the wake of the largest uprisings in U.S. history, sparked by police violence, bloated police budgets, and the deadly impacts of a failure to invest in community health and safety laid bare by the pandemic, pro-police forces are on the defensive.
Defund the Police - Invest in Community Care: A Guide to Alternative Mental Health Responses: The primary purpose of this guide is to serve as a pragmatic tool for individuals and communities organizing and advocating for non-police mental health crisis responses, and to offer key considerations for what can be a complex, costly, and long-term intervention strategy.
This report and accompanying curriculum for sexual assault service providers is intended to contribute to breaking this silence, to summarize what we know about sexual violence by law enforcement officers, and to offer concrete steps toward prevention of police sexual violence and increased safety, support, and opportunities for healing for survivors.
The Demand is Still Defund: This update to our June 2020 #DefundPolice toolkit reflects victories won across the country, key strategies deployed, some lessons learned, tricks, tensions, and roadblocks along the way, and key questions communities are contending with in campaigns to defund police as we look forward to 2021. (Disponible en Español.)
What's Next? Safer and More Just Communities Without Policing: This new collaborative document edited by Mariame Kaba outlines ten major steps required to successfully launch a new paradigm for real safety, existing institutions that help create real safety, a deeper dive on police and prison abolition, and more models to explore.
#DefundPolice is a demand to cut funding and resources from police departments and other law enforcement and invest in things that actually make our communities safer: quality, affordable, and accessible housing, universal quality health care, including community-based mental health services, income support, safe living wage employment, education, and youth programming.
Recent Projects
Defundaplooza 2021: Explore the latest materials for #DefundThePolice campaigns and organizers from IC, Community Resource Hub, DefundPolice.org, and more!
Abolition Imagination Cards: A project conceived by Mariame Kaba and coordinated by Micah Bazant. Explore images, download, print, and share!
In partnership with Project Nia, One Million Experiments is a virtual zine project that explores snapshots of community-based safety strategies.
Browse IC events to view recordings, download and share graphic notes, and connect on issues you are interested in.
Building strategy around police abolition in healthcare and care spaces with national allies, #DPHMustDivest & Frontline Wellness Network
Download artwork and purchase posters created to help spark conversations around coronavirus, criminalization, public health guidance, and community care.
6Ds Until She’s Free: A Comprehensive Cross-Sector Strategy to Interrupt, Reduce and End Criminalization and Mass Incarceration and Deportation of Women, Trans and Gender Nonconforming People