Between the years 2021 and 2024, the Biden administration has rapidly created and expanded initiatives that massively expand surveillance and control of immigrant communities who are not detained in physical cages. The Alternatives to Detention Program, also known as ISAP, is a major arm of these initiatives, but not the only one. Hundreds of thousands of people are controlled by this program and the Biden administration threatens to control millions more through the creation of programs like the Release and Reporting Management Program. This zine was created by the people closest to the issue – directly impacted communities and grassroots community organizers. It adapts real life stories of struggle, isolation, politicization, and organizing efforts.
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Community Justice Exchange partnered with Defender Impact Initiative to produce this toolkit for folks working to end mass criminalization and incarceration, who have taken to social media to share the injustices they witness or experience in courtrooms, whether as public defenders, court watching groups, or individual advocates.
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The Abolish Data Criminalization Curriculum Workbook is an educational tool for organizers committed to learning about and organizing against migrant surveillance and social control. The workbook contains five guided activities with accompanying resources. It operates as a facilitation guide that will engage participants in discussions, personal and collective reflections, study, and more.
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Community Justice Exchange partnered with Project NIA, Court Watch MA, Families for Justice as Healing, and Survived and Punished NY to produce a document that outlines abolitionist principles, as well as strategies and tactics, for organizing campaigns targeted at prosecutors.
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We are at a crossroads where campaigns to end money bail and pretrial incarceration must also contend with the broad and insidious introduction of risk assessment tools (RATs) as one of the “replacement” interventions the system wants to claim as “reform.” We created this guide for organizers contending with this tension -- how to engage with risk assessment tools in their work to end pretrial incarceration and mass supervision.
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There is no one “right” way to set up a legal defense fund or rapid response bail fund, and these definitions can be fluid depending on the needs of your local community. Historically, legal activists have employed a variety of approaches when creating and operating these funds, often specific to political circumstances and differences in local legal systems. This document, developed by the National Bail Fund Network and the National Lawyers Guild, provides an overview of some of the best practices distilled from decades of legal defense fund experiences.
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Beyond Criminal Courts: Defund and Divest is a digital resource hub 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. It is a collaborative project created by Community Justice Exchange and Interrupting Criminalization, with incredible web design and development by Research Action Design, illustrations by Noah Jodice, and Spanish translation by tilde Language Justice Collaborative.
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There is no one right way to start a bail fund. This document is intended for organizers, legal advocates, and organizations contemplating starting a bail fund as an intervention in the criminal legal and/or immigration detention systems
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As community bail and bond funds, we are fighting to abolish detention in all of its forms and for all individuals. In times of crisis such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, we uplift our call to #FreeThemAll with more urgency than ever. There are local and state-specific responses to the current COVID-19 crisis, many with specific calls to release individuals in local jails, prisons, and ICE detention. We hope this is an additional resource for community bail and bond funds to support and amplify efforts to release as many people as possible.
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The guide provides an analysis on the use of immigration bond as a limited tactical intervention that organizers use to free as many people as possible from detention, but not a solution (nor a system we are trying to improve) to end immigration detention.
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This document provides some guidance and tools for families, organizers, and advocates who are demanding real decarceration and health equity while pushing back against the false narratives that invoke public health in order to uphold mass criminalization and incarceration during COVID-19.
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