ABSTRACT
This Article draws on prison abolitionist organizing, campaigns, and intellectual work around the country to offer a framework for thinking about radical reforms rooted in an abolitionist framework. A radical reform (1) shrinks the system doing harm; (2) relies on modes of political, economic, and social organization that contradict prevailing arrangements and gesture at new possibilities; (3) builds and shifts power into the hands of those directly impacted, who are often Black, brown, working class, and poor; (4) acknowledges and repairs past harm; and (5) improves, or at least does not harm, the material conditions of directly impacted people. After laying out the framework, the Article examines three reforms: body cameras, “progressive prosecutors,” and reparations. While we agree with abolitionist organizers that no singular reform can fundamentally transform political, economic, and social relations, abolitionist frameworks create space to collectively agitate on the role of reform in transformational, rather than legitimating, projects.
