Most often, attacks on libraries focus on books—various interest groups have tried to remove a wide range of books from library shelves. Sometimes, though, librarians who take the egalitarian mission of the library seriously have also become targets of their communities or of the state.

Read, print, and share Interrupting Criminalization’s new zine. Readers will learn about the history of police in libraries, tales of librarians who have been targeted by law enforcement and those that have resisted policing the stacks. With books, libraries, and library patrons under threat, explore histories of resistance to policing inside libraries and the calls to action going out today.

By Mariame Kaba and Jane Ball and gorgeously illustrated by Olly Costello, Prisons Must Fall is a powerful children’s book showing the harm that prisons cause and exploring solutions that do not involve incarceration, such as meeting people's basic needs, restorative justice, and community support—seeds for a safe world.

A report by the National Black Women’s Justice Institute and Interrupting Criminalization that examines diversion programs from the perspective of the people they impact the most — participants themselves — and offers recommendations for program evaluation and creation of community-based programs that genuinely divert people from the criminal punishment system toward sustainable well-being.

This update to Interrupting Criminalization’s 2019 publication What Is Driving Criminalization of Women and LGBTQ People? comes as we enter into a new phase of rising authoritarianism and fascism across the United States, which necessarily will be operationalized through intensified policing, criminalization, imprisonment, detention, and deportations.

As we mobilize to stop ongoing genocides in Gaza, the West Bank, the Sudan and beyond, as well as corporate and state-sponsored violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and navigate increasingly dire conditions on every front in the U.S. and at the border, we hope that these curricula can be helpful in creating a roadmap and container for individuals and groups to really dig into the wealth of toolkits, reports, and resources for organizers we’ve created over the past 5 years.

A report sharing learnings from a virtual transnational transnational conference for transformative justice, restorative justice, and community accountability practitioners that took place in May 2023. The report includes case studies from Kurdistan, India, the Philippines, and Argentina, and looks at the different languages and lineages people draw on in each of these places to root transformative justice practices in their local soil.

A toolkit offering resources, responses, and questions to consider in building robust community ecosystems of collective care at the neighborhood and city-wide levels. Based on Interrupting Criminalization’s work and practice spaces, and aimed at helping communities seeking to strengthen networks of community care and advance transformative justice.

A report summarizing the impacts of the global drug war on Black women, girls, and trans and gender nonconforming people, as well as the Black feminist visions, analysis, and needs articulated during the Building Black Feminist Visions to End the Drug War convening hosted by Interrupting Criminalization, the Drug Policy Alliance, and In Our Names Network in June 2023.

Chart breaking down the difference between reformist reforms which continue or expand the reach of the drug war, and abolitionist steps that work to chip away and reduce its overall impact. Originally from the report, Building Black Feminist Visions to End the Drug War.

This is the third ‘zine in a series responding to or engaging with questions relating to the role of the state in abolitionist futures. This ‘zine features a lightly edited transcript of a presentation given by academic, activist, writer Nazan Üstündağ.

Illustrated graphic notes from a public panel kicking off How Do We Relate to the State?, a two-day virtual convening hosted by IC in September 2023.

A report sharing insights from a 3-year community story-telling project engaging Black girls, trans and GNC youth around their experiences of police presence in schools, including sexual harassment, assault, and violence.

A summary of lessons learned over the past two years of IC’s monthly, virtual peer learning space for organizations working to collectively intervene in and respond to crises without police — including issues explored, resources shared, questions to consider, and pitfalls to avoid.

A resource for anyone working to build collective community-based, non-carceral responses to crisis. This piece helps refine some necessary language that current abolitionist activists and organizers are using in this work, and helps us to make critical distinctions and ask ourselves critical questions as we build and learn from our work together.

This is a reading and discussion guide for Practicing New Worlds by Andrea J. Ritchie, an exploration of how emergent strategies can help us meet this moment, survive what is to come, and shape safer and more just futures.

A pocket zine on bystander intervention and de-escalation, as an abolitionist practice for dealing with harm or potential harm in your community without involving the police.

A resource for media on covering Palestine and Israel. This guide attempts to unpack a few key places where IDF propaganda shows up in news reporting, offers tips for what (and what NOT) to do in coverage, and shares additional recommended resources.

Challenging, interrupting, and building a world beyond criminalization is the unifying thread of IC’s work — and of the infrastructure and resources we are creating to support organizers on the ground across the country. Learn more in this summary of IC’s first five years of work.

Health care workers are placed in many situations where their loyalty to their patient is in conflict with their (purported) loyalty to the state. And while some legal protections are in place to protect health care workers who refuse to engage in these carceral collaborations, it is often unclear when and where a worker is protected.