This person spent a year at Rikers as a teenager. On his first day, he took note of how dirty and smelly the jail facility was. He remembers the mice, rats, and cockroaches. He survived a stabbing there, and also witnessed slashings and violence. "Nobody’s your friend on that whole Island," he recalls. (Summary written by: Annie Anderson)

Anonymous A street interview 07.29.19

Abolition Science Fiction (2022) is a collection of sci-fi short stories written by activists and scholars involved in prison abolition and transformative justice in the UK, edited by Phil Crockett Thomas. The stories are not all explicitly about prison abolition, but all of them explore the underlying question of how we can live well together, tackling complex topics like violence, revenge, responsibility, care, and community. As such they can help us imagine a future where we respond to harm without exclusion and punishment, illustrating Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s contention that ‘abolition requires that we change one thing: everything.’ Alongside the stories are extracts from discussions from the workshops where we wrote and shared the stories. There are also creative writing exercises and discussion prompts, included to help listeners explore ideas about abolition and transformative justice in creative ways. The book is aimed both at those curious about abolition and at seasoned activists who want to explore abolition through creative writing.

You can download a free copy of the ebook at https://abolitionscifi.org/

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