About Us

Building Capacity, Creating Change

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.

We Believe In The Power Of Communities

An initiative led by veteran Black feminist abolitionist organizers Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie, we create resources, develop containers, and weave 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.

  • “It’s important for us to be able to have those conversations, to be able to talk to other organizers, to learn their best practices...That’s going to sustain our movement and sustain the momentum across the country.”

    Devin Anderson, African American Roundtable

  • “What I primarily learned today was about shifting my critical thinking about daily news to focus on harm, rather than on crime. I am an editor and breaking news producer and I felt that the discussion of framing was a fundamentally different way of news assembly that had not been presented to me before.”

    Attendee of “Don’t Be a Copagandist: Covering Violence & “Crime” with an Abolitionist Lens

  • “[Building Your Abolitionist Toolbox] prompted me to literally start a mutual aid network for survivors of intimate partner violence in my community, and has also been the guide for myself and a group of colleagues who are working to build a truly community-based, non-state involved crisis response program for survivors in our community.”

Our Team

Our organization includes co-founders Andrea J. Ritchie and Mariame Kaba, four staff, and four fellows whose projects focus on interrupting criminalization in health care, supporting transformative justice and liberatory harm reduction, strengthening abolitionist journalism, and organizing with labor for abolition. IC operates virtually, with staff and fellows active in organizing communities across the United States.

Frequent Collaborators

Join Us In Interrupting Criminalization

Interrupting Criminalization is entirely supported through grassroots fundraising, private donations, and foundation funding. For more information or to support our work, feel free to get in touch.