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Abolishing prisons in the UK (Kelsey from CAPE)

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Episode 1 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Kelsey from Community Action on Prison Expansion (CAPE).

Show notes, links

Transcript

Kat: This is Resist Renew. A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we’re fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I’m recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it’s a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: Alright, welcome to the first episode in the resist and renew podcast. Today we are going to be talking about abolishing prisons in the UK. And we are happy to be joined by Kelsey from CAPE. So a little bit about Kelsey. Kelsey is a prison abolitionist, organiser and freelance facilitator based in London, and as part of Community Action on Prison Expansion, which is a network of grassroots groups fighting prison expansion in England, Wales and Scotland. Prior to COVID, Kelsey has been travelling the UK and abroad delivering workshops and trainings to build collective power in resisting and dismantling the prison industrial complex. Kelsey is also part of Cradle, a transformative justice collective, and also happens to be part of Resist and Renew, which is why we’re interviewing her first. Thanks for joining us, Kelsey.

Kelsey: Thanks for inviting me.

Ali: We had to.

Kelsey: Great.

Ali: Yeah, I know Sami is dying to jump in straight into things. But before we do that, just a little note to say this episode’s gonna be slightly different to our future episodes in that, normally there will be two hosts. But because this is the first one, we’re all just excited to jump in. So all three of us myself, Ali, Sami, and Katherine, or Kat, will be here. And you can hear a bit more about us as people in our teaser, if you haven’t listened to that.

Sami: Now is it the time to get into it?

Kat: Yeah,

Sami: I think it is. Okay. So to kick us off. Kelsey, could you tell us a bit about the context that you’re organising in with CAPE? Like, why is it that you chose this work specifically?

Kelsey: Thank you for that question, I guess. Well, so I, I’m a prison abolitionist, which means that I fundamentally don’t think that our society needs or should have prisons or policing or function with these systems of punishment. And, but it also means that I look critically at what violence itself means. And, and so I include state violence within like that analysis. And so I kind of came to this work first through doing feminist anti violence organising. And through that kind of began to further understand the role of the criminal justice system in the supposed support that survivors receive, particularly in this country.

Kelsey: And yeah, and I basically got involved in a local campaign around Holloway prison, which is a campaign that really shows like so many intersections, I think of this work where it was the biggest women’s prison in Western Europe. It was closing down, it was closed in 2016. But that doesn’t mean that all of the people who are held in that prison were actually released, it means that they were just shipped off to different prisons around the country. And in fact, Holloway, because it was the only women’s prison that’s actually really in London, you know, it’s in Islington and so many people who held there, were actually still quite close to their communities, it’s much easier for people to visit prison in London than one in rural Surrey, or elsewhere on the English countryside. Right. And so it the kind of impact that that has on a community. And the way that that is actually tied to what do they want to use that land for? And where is that money going to go? Right? And so, upon learning a bit more about that, and that campaign, realising that this is very much tied to gentrification, like they want to use that land for maximum profit with luxury flats. While the community really wants to have more social housing, you know Islington is a council borough that has over 10,000 people on the council housing list. We know that the money that was going to be made from that site, you know, originally was planned to just go into building more prisons. And so it didn’t feel like this was going to be a positive move in any direction, basically.

Kelsey: And it just really started to help me connect a lot of the dots in learning from lots of the people organising around that issue and, and on connected issues. And so while I, you know, I have family who is in the US and is impacted by the criminal justice system, and have seen how that system has worked to impact their lives and the communities over there, firsthand. And started to really see from that moment, kind of how it is and how it was acting out like in in London, and in this place that I wasn’t quite at quite as familiar with, you know, and so, basically got involved in the work here, realised that, at the same time, as they were closing Holloway prison, they are announcing that, for the first time the prisoners state transformation programme, which will, which is a government scheme, basically, to build 10,000 new prison places, originally, by 2020. None of those prisons have been built yet so far, which is great news for us. However, you know, that that is still very much their intention, and they have re announced that plan in various forms. You might remember, last summer, Boris was like, we’re gonna build 10,000, new prison places, well, those were plans where they were already like, on the way, and then now, with COVID, and the kind of economic recovery scheme, project speed. Now these prisons have been tied up in that as part of a way to, in some way, bolster the economy. Yeah. But I mean, I don’t even really know what the logic is, and how they find it to tie that to be honest. But essentially, they just keep re announcing these same prisons, and two of them are in the process of being built in the Midlands. And one of them has been approved through like sort of one set of planning permissions with the local council in East Yorkshire. And then the others are sort of still in the process, potentially, one, two or three more depending on what they can, what they can manage, essentially, and so on.

Kelsey: And so basically, CAPE is an organisation that tries to connect with people local to these new prison sites, and to support the collective power and campaigning, to resist those sites, not because only people local to a prison will be impacted by that prison, people get moved from prisons across the country and end up very incredibly far away from home. It’s not the end up just local to you. But because the legacy of community organising that we follow has found strategically that organising with communities local to disrupt things like planning permission and environmental impact assessments and sort of connecting with the people who actually live close by to friends and sites is a really strong strategic move. And also, because obviously, there are often people who will also be impacted and feel strongly about about these things. And so we’re not we’re not there to just fly in and be like, this is what we think. So, yeah, we’ve been doing that since sort of 2016 focusing on these mega prisons that they’re trying to build around the country, as well as other iterations of prison expansion. So that means new types of prisons for young people, which they’re now calling secure schools, they’re trying to trying to open one of those up in Kent at the moment, as well as plans for what would be women’s prisons but are being called women’s residential centres, which are following a slightly different kind of model, but are still prisons.

Ali: Yeah, thanks for that overview is really good to get a picture of like, what the current situation here is in the UK in regards to like expansion. I feel like it’s something that I hear about every now and then like I remember hearing about big grand plans for a prison and mega prison in Wrexham. I think it was,

Kelsey: yeah, yeah,

Ali: then it kind of went quiet. So it goes off off my radar. So it’s good to get touched back in on that. I had a question around. Yeah, like the context specific to the UK because like you mentioned America, and you mentioned like friends, family and other organisers, you’re in touch with their. And I feel like the US is like, the example for abolitionists like, prisons are bad in America, the police kill people more violently with guns and stuff. And I just want to know, like, what’s specific to prison contexts in the UK?

Kelsey: Yeah, I think often when we talk about prisons, we often – er people kind of get by by being like, well, at least we’re not America, you know, and like, like, that’s where they… and they do that with racism, too, right. And they try and kind of like, say that these these are things that are less of an issue as if they aren’t issues that were actually created by the British. And in many ways, yeah, things that were exported to the US in their original forms. And what I mean by that is that so in the UK, or, well, so in England, and Wales has its own prison system, and Scotland has its own devolved criminal justice system. However, many of their laws and kind of like the conditions and such are very similar. It’s unfortunate that we compare ourselves to America because we have a very different population in the UK as well, like, so we actually have a very white population, you know, and like, particularly, if you look at Scotland, we know that people of colour, maybe like 2% of the population, even so we know that so in England and Wales, the overall population of Black and brown people is like around 10%, maybe up to 12%. And the prison population is about 25%. So we know that that’s hugely disproportionate, and it’s about similarly like double disproportionate in in Scotland as well. We also know that we have the highest death rate in Europe, when it comes to prisons, the highest rates of self harm and violence, and these kinds of these kinds of things. The conditions are much worse, we have more people in solitary confinement, but obviously, we just have fancy words for that. And we, yeah, all kinds of different ways. And so, you know, that doesn’t even include our detention system, you know, where we’re actually also imprisoning a huge amount of Black and brown people in very similar conditions for for these kinds of offences.

Kelsey: And, and what we’re seeing, in fact, something that I really want people to think about is the the recent news around Morton Hall, which is a immigration detention centre, that was announced that it is closing, which, which again, sounds like a big win, but actually is going to be turned into a prison for foreign nationals. Which to me sounds like a detention centre, you know. And so I think what we need to really think about when we think about things like crime is that these concepts will change in order to control, surveil, and cage, Black and brown people. And so the the people are the criminals, regardless of what they’ve done, you know, and that’s kind of that’s kind of the perspective that we’re coming out from and and conversations that we’re having with, with other people within the migrants rights movement around kind of messaging that’s been put forward around, who are the real criminals and these kinds of things, and actually how we potentially shot ourselves in the foot by not by not actually kind of thinking about the ways that these reforms will be taken in order to use criminality against us.

Kelsey: Something else just as another thing that’s really important, I think for us to think about is the way that COVID has been policed, right, the way that actually like on the streets, the policing in the UK, is really extreme. And we know that the harassment, that particularly young black men experience is hugely disproportionate. And that was even more so during COVID. And during lockdown. And unfortunately, we have a culture here where there are a lot of people who will call the police on people who are breaking rules around lockdown and such rather than maybe just speaking to them themselves, or potentially, you know, just speaking to the people that are close to them, making sure that they are abiding by the rules and are able to abide by the rules rather than, you know, just calling the cops on each other. And I really want to something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is this kind of approach to public health through a criminal justice lens. And the ways that they’ve just tried to like police this virus away, the way we even moved from stayed home to stay alert. And, and so policing is so ingrained in in this and in the culture here.

Kelsey: And, yeah, and the final point on that is to make that connection to in comparison to the US where We can really see, (sorry, my dog), we can really see a very clear linear transition of colonisers to people who were enslaving other people, to the policing of free people and the continued like exploitation of labour that happened on US soil. But here, we don’t have that same kind of legacy on this land, but it just happened in the colonies. And so I think the British is very good at kind of pretending that they are better. Because it’s less kind of, like visible. And you, you know, like, having visited the South and, and kind of like you can feel it in, in the like land, you know, that like so much violence. And all of this has happened and that people like have lived that legacy, while their own people were enslaved on that land. And it’s much more similar to how it feels like in a formerly colonised country, compared to in Britain, where they just kind of like outsourced all of that labour. And we’re kind of like, that’s all happening over there. And we will keep our hands clean over here. So I just want to kind of like, think about that. And if we look at the UK prison population, we know that it’s skyrocketed, it increased massively. At the same time, as we see the Windrush generation, we see an influx of black and brown migrants during the 60s and 70s. And that’s when we start seeing more detention centres and more prisons, and more police on the streets. It’s very clear to me like what that line is, and and how that kind of, yeah, how that all worked. Sorry, I know, I’ve gone over time. I could talk about this for hours. So you’re lucky.

Sami: I mean, if only this were an interview where we wanted you to talk. I think it’s like I like I think one just one quick thing to throw in is like in terms of the COVID policing stuff. For people that aren’t aware, there’s a group called Netpol, the network for police monitoring, who were doing, like kind of like policing, the crisis, series of reports and updates and stuff. So definitely a thing to check out for people if they’re not aware of it, and they haven’t seen it.

Sami: And I think the question that came to me part of some of the things you were saying, because you’re mentioning around like, cape is like community, and community action against prison expansion and everyone but the which the A is, is

Kelsey: its whatever you kind of want is campaigns against prison expansion, communities against prison expansion, community action, and further expansion, whichever one fits the acronym for you. But whenever you feel pulled towards,

Sami: I love it. But the one thing that everyone agrees on is the P stands for prison. But isn’t what you have been coming back to in terms of what you’re saying is you’ve been talking about prisons in terms of what I think a lot of people think of when you say prison, but you’ve also been talking about secure schools, you’ve been talking about immigration detention centres, removal centres, whatever anodyne word the state gives them like so to you. What do you like, when you talk about prison expansion? Like what does that mean? It sounds like it’s broader than what a lot of people would think prison refers to?

Kelsey: Yes, absolutely. It is, obviously, the prisons themselves, but any other form of incarceration, or caging. And so that includes whether it’s for immigration offences, or whether it is under the Mental Health Act, any sort of unconsensual ways that they put people in cages, I don’t think its okay. And I think is like a fundamentally flawed way of like addressing any issues, and causes a lot more harm in and of itself, even if that’s a really nice cage, right. And even that, you know, like, even if it’s got your PlayStation or your nice sofa, wherever it is that they’re doing now. It’s still the isolation and the impact that it has on your mental health and on communities having people removed like that. It doesn’t work. And so, yeah, we’re thinking about secure schools, which are a partnership between the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Education and so they will be housing people who are 12 to 17. They will be there like you know, under criminal charges, but it will be a much more palatable thing, even though it’s going to be in the same building as a Secure Training Centre was which is what, you know, they just put into new paint on the walls or whatever. Changing the curriculum up a little bit. But it’s not dealing with the root of the issue, you know, and so and so that’s the same and equally types of prison expansion, such as these kinds of reforms that would involve expanding existing prisons. So a while ago, there was ideas for maybe like trans transgender wings and stuff, these kinds of things, or maybe a non binary prison in Scotland, these kinds of reforms that, like, attempt to yeah, you know, this kind of like progressive. Yeah, criminal justice work, but that doesn’t actually understand that the prison itself, for example, like violently reinforces the gender binary, the state puts the gender on a person. And like that in itself, like, we know that anyone who is in any way gender non conforming experiences more violence at the hands of screws in prison as well. And so they’re not the friends of anyone who is trans or gender non conforming, right.

Sami: The one thing as a as a non binary person is obviously for safety in the UK, it’s definitely nothing around like trans exclusionary narratives promoted the press. It’s a trap. It’s a trans prison. That’s what makes me feel safe.

Kelsey: It’s it’s the prison. Yeah, exactly. So those kinds of reforms. Yeah, we should shout down immediately. Because if they build them, they will fill them, you know, like, there is no need to build separate things for for more marginalised people. There is no, there is no way that that will work out well, for anyone.

Sami: Love it.

Kat: Okay, there’s a lot, thank you for sharing all of the context and giving us some background about what’s going on.

Kelsey: And oh, there’s more.

Kat: There’s more Go for it. Yeah, go on.

Kelsey: Yeah, I’ll I’ll kick myself if I swear, you speak about expansion. I don’t speak about expansion. That’s not just about caging, I suppose. Because we also talk about the ways of the prison industrial complex, is expanding into our communities. And in fact, that’s another way that is getting co-opted, I spoke about those women’s residential centres, as opposed to the mega prisons, which will be these giant prisons for over 1000 people with big workshops and enough to have like large labour forces being exploited within them. The prisons for people that the state deems women will be smaller, maybe like 12 beds, closer to communities, and yet still kind of within this narrative of like, Oh, well, because people who end up in women’s prisons needs support. Once they’ve been criminalised, then you can access your addiction support, and then you can access your domestic violence support. And then you can, you know, all these kinds of things rather than like, I don’t know, not criminalising people in the first place.

Kelsey: And also, like the idea that they’re putting them in communities just makes me very worried, because how integrated are we talking? Are we talking about moving kids into there now? Or are we talking about, you know, like, what happens to families still? You know, it’s it’s not it’s not a path that’s, that’s any good to me, but also, these kinds of, but yeah, so these kinds of narratives around care also mean that then more people are getting tagged. So they’re getting ankle tags, or are on probation and parole, and that means that they are still being policed within their communities, they’re still massively restricted from living their lives and making choices like for themselves, right. And, you know, you’re still going to have social services and not have your home and still, potentially not be able to live with your kids or these kinds of things, but also like curfews and these kind of things that can really impact your ability to work. Or just like, you know, continue having your community and stuff. So there are ways that the police this policing is like ending up within communities is also important to acknowledge that it’s not enough to to just let people out it’s a it’s the whole system needs to be removed from our communities.

*Music interlude by Jack Light*

Kat: Yeah, thanks for giving that background. And yeah, telling us the context. And I think Yeah, we’re gonna move on a bit to talk more about, like, what are the actions that you’re working on? And the the work that CAPE is kind of focusing on now. And if you could share a little bit about that, and maybe why and why, why this this work, and that you’re choosing to focus on at the moment?

Kelsey: So in CAPE, we always balancing these constant tensions, as I feel a lot of a lot of groups are where it feels like everything is on fire. And also, like, this is still not really an issue that is kind of like very, like widely sort of understood or cared about, I guess, like in in the way that that we feel it needs to be. Or at least people don’t necessarily have an outlet to know what to do with, with their feelings around present expansion, and a new prisons. And so yeah, there’s, there’s these constant things of like, like I said, two of these prisons are being built in the Midlands. And so we are working on building our connections in those areas. And, you know, there were some actions taken last summer. And potentially, allegedly, there could be further actions taken.

Kelsey: You know, depending on on kind of like, yeah, what’s possible, as those as those goes forward, but also, we’re in a, in a moment of really thinking about how we build the group and how we kind of do some, like deep political education in the UK at the moment to, to help people understand kind of like, what the specifics are of the UK, exactly how the prison industrial complex is, is built within within this state and, and all of these connections, because it’s so deep, like, deeply connected and entwined in so many systems here in terms of the domestic violence systems and sexual violence systems, in education, in housing and social care, in health care, immigration, all of these things. And it’s Yeah, it’s tied to so many things, I guess. And I think that at the moment, we have some awareness around things like stopping search, and some around deaths in custody, for sure. But I’m not sure that people are necessarily making that connection around like, you know, they’re not going to stop stopping and searching people in marginalised communities if they build more prisons, because they need to fill those prisons. So like they’re going to be wanting to make more arrests. And so it really is like part of that trajectory, I think, and if we can resist the, the not just like the capacity to cage people, but also change the narrative of where our resources should be going, you know, like, for me, how does it make sense in the recovery from COVID, when what we’ve learned is that there is no housing for all of the people who are houseless during this time, that there wasn’t anywhere for the people that should have been let out of prison even by Public Health England and the Ministry of Justice’s own estimations during this time, this pandemic there wasn’t enough housing supposedly for those people. Rather than build more housing, they want to build more prisons. For me these kinds of things, I think we need to, it’s tied so much to the austerity narrative and to these other kinds of agendas that the government has. That Yeah, I think it’s, um, it’s just important. I kind of lost my, my steam then.

Ali: It was good. Yeah. Um, to pull it back a bit. Now, you were talking about the Midlands, and like building relationships up to that?

Kelsey: Yes.

Ali: Can you talk us through a bit about how you go about building those relationships? And whether there are like challenges around like getting over narratives around prisons being like that to protect us? in people’s heads? Or is it like people are just raring to go and like, abolitionists already up there? what’s what’s, what’s it like building relationships?

Kelsey: And so, if we’ve connected to people who were sort of, like, you know, I guess, like lots of stuff can end up being a very London centric and CAPE has been quite good at, actually, for a long time having people who were based all over the country, and we did quite a lot of online organising sort of pre-COVID. But we also really used to make the effort to travel and go see each other and hold workshops in the places that, yeah, hold workshops, talks and and try and do local outreach to, to, like, raise awareness around the around the fact that a new prison was being built, and then to get people’s opinions and figure out what issues and what are the values that are important in those different areas. So one of the prisons that isn’t being built, that has been rejected, was going to be in South Wales in Port Talbot. And similarly to the East Midlands, as an area where, you know, there are a lot of jobs lost, and a lot of people being sold the idea that the prisons will bring jobs to the area, but in connecting to that the values that people have in that area, that’s that priorities around Job’s Okay. Well, the reality of a prison is that actually is going to bring more jobs to the or more work to the people who are imprisoned within that prison than actually working as staff in that prison, that’s going to be maybe 100 people or something, it’s not actually going to be that many, compared to the thousand people that advocate they’re going to be working inside, how about, like, the campaign was very strong, because the community came together to sort of have a to say, we want jobs, but not these jobs, you know, and, and that kind of thing can be really powerful. So it’s, it’s about connecting with the, with the values of the local area, and what’s important to people, it’s not necessarily an abolitionist perspective always that comes through in those campaigns, for sure. But it’s a start, you know, and it starts people really thinking about, like, what else could we use that money for? And that’s, that’s definitely something we’ve learned from, from comrades in the US – fight toxic prisons – and groups like that who’ve done really strong things in terms of connecting to both people inside prisons and outside in terms of what are your priorities? And what would you rather see this money go to is a great way to kind of win people around when you’re like, this is gonna be 100 million pounds on this thing. What would your town do with that? You know, like, that is a big question for people. But that does connect, you know, so, yeah.

Sami: It’s really getting into like, those tensions are just always so present in terms of like, when you’re getting more into community organising about like, how you maintain your values as an organisation whilst also trying to like, get effective victories. And which leads on to a thought around, because we’ve talked a bit about like, CAPE, the work that you do as an organisation and the projects you’ve got going on at the moment, it’d be really helpful if you could talk a little bit about like, how you live those values, like you mentioned, like abolition, abolitionist values, I guess, in terms of the work that your organisation does, either external or internal, like how do you organise it in abolitionists way within yourselves? How do you make sure you represent that kind of vibe going outside hope it’s not prescriptive, to apply that abolitionists label to CAPE given the sounds like you did?

Kelsey: No, that’s absolutely fine. I think abolition is something that we’re always striving for, right like we are all products of this world. That is not an abolitionist one. And so we are in no way perfectly doing it. I am in no way perfectly living in abolitionists life, I’ll come clean about that right now. But we all live in this horrible capitalist society unfortunately. However, we do try to do the as they call it was it – “prefigurative politics” thing, which is where you try to live your politics to the best of your ability, right. So we try to organise non hierarchically, we try to look after each other, we just try to really, you know, these tensions that I spoke about is like, a lot of us come to this work from a deeply personal place. And a lot of us are people who already live on the margins and working with a lot of people of colour, a lot of trans and non binary people. And so we’ve all got shit going on our own mental health, our own like, personal stuff, as well as the way that the work itself impacts us. And so learning to balance the way that a lot of us feel super, super urgent about this, with also understanding that this is long term work, that the PIC (Prison Industrial Complex) was not built in a day, and we actually will not be able to dismantle it all in a day. And so something might feel super urgent, but that if the capacity isn’t there, that we have to get better at kind of like, you know, processing that and like dealing with things in like a slower sort of way. We have all of these conversations. And we are like getting better at all of those things, I think. And we’re there for each other in like a Yeah, an emotional and sort of, often physical way if needed, like around sort of resisting arrest or resisting. Yeah. Other kinds of like invasions by the state. It’s about showing up for each other, being active bystanders, not just for people in the group, but strangers and our neighbours and things like that. Trying to do that political education work as well. And kind of like, in the spaces that we’re in often ending up somehow organising or educating people, as we do this work, you know, like, part of this is, yeah, leading with the kind of like, connecting with people on their values. And then, and then, yeah, we all kind of like people’s politics like transition as they also enter these spaces, you know. So giving people the understanding and stuff that they, they need, I think, is a big part of this. I guess in sort of, like practical ways, yes. These like ways of showing up for each other trying to support each other when we do workshops, and talks and actions. Having a lot of like feedback, culture, and some like ritual and stuff ingrained into our, into ourselves to like, builds collectivity and these kinds of things.

Sami: I jump in there and ask – you said rituals, I love a good ritual. Could you talk a little bit more about any, like rituals you do? within your group? If it’s not like, sharing secrets?

Kelsey: It’s, I guess, I wouldn’t like share specifics, but it will be it’s just things about how you set the space when you are together, you know, and like, little, we have like a fun kind of a game that we play at the beginning of meetings that’s supposed to sort of like engage your imagination a bit and make us think about this world, like beyond prisona, to tap into kind of like where we’re at that day. We have these kinds of things that that Yeah, I’m trying to like build in that like feedback culture and stuff. So every time you’re like coming away from a thing, having these rituals of like, how you check in about things, whatever, which become little games and you know, kind of take the heaviness out of it a little bit sometimes. And it makes it easier to say no, if you’re not in the mood as well, we were just like not now, like you can kind of just be like, Don’t say that thing right now. You know, like, and it’s quite? Yeah, it’s a kind of a delay. It brings a bit of lightness and stuff to it, which I think is something we all need when we’re talking about prisons all the time.

Kat: Yeah, I love that idea as well of having that space to sort of dream a bit into beyond prisons, and like, what is what are we actually imagining this world will look like? And, and I guess like that comes up for me a bit when I have these sorts of conversations with friends who and around prison who basically reply with like, well, what’s the alternative? Like, people do bad things. This is the system that we’ve got, therefore, that’s fine. And so I’m kind of wondering if you could just maybe share a little bit more about some of the alternatives that are being dreamt up, and that are also existing in some of these spaces already.

Kelsey: Yeah. I guess that’s partly why me and some friends decided to create Cradle, which is like a group that focuses more on the transformative justice work, and feels like generally more hopeful, like more experimental, more creative and yeah, and I think that you know, there is there is lots of, of great work happening in sort of like pockets. I’ve learned a lot from the way that Sisters Uncut organise, and the ways that they’ve taken a lot of those transformative justice principles, and I can grant them into the ways that they organise and also create spaces. And with Cradle what’s been really cool was before COVID, we were hosting these monthly dinners for black and brown people who do sort of anti state violence work. And that was just like, a social space. It wasn’t an organising space. It was where we have, you know, obviously, like, things will come up and people end up sharing and strategizing informally, but it was more, it was just a space for like joy and like good music and really good food. And, and these kinds of things. And those are usually the most imaginative spaces for me. That’s where we we have even sometimes in a almost comical way, but in a wistful way of we I’ve remember having a conversation about what how great the apocalypse would be afterwards, because then we’d be able to just start again. I’m like, Oh, yeah, and that was before COVID, which is it’s not been that great, I guess. But, um, you know, yeah. Sorry, about that. And I guess, uh, yeah, these kinds of spaces where we can, like, have fun and connect, and, and all of that feels, feels transformative in and of itself. But yeah, we we have been sort of like holding spaces to explore, explore these alternatives of how we even transform these relationships that we have, or how we build relationships that are not based around punishment, or competition, or, yeah, all these other kinds of things that capitalism teaches us and like how we actually build trust in, in different relationships, and how we, yeah, kind of, yeah, kind of exploring different things. which I think has been great spaces for, for just like more hopeful work, and sort of more reflective work that we often don’t really get to do. But I also really like the practical stuff, like de escalation trainings, and bystander intervention trainings and things like that. Because often people are like, I think what, what the criminal justice system actually does, is it because it exists, it makes everyone feel like they can’t do anything. And it’s the same with mental health institutions. And it’s the same with you know, the fact of psychiatrists, existing means that other people are like, Oh, I can’t help my friends mental health needs. And I think that professionalism and, and all of these things, as well as, like, just these ideas of punishment, kind of mean that we, we are disempowered in these ways that actually, we have a lot of skills in our communities. And we actually do a lot of these things naturally, or have done when we’ve had to. And so tapping into that, and doing it more intentionally and consciously, rather than relying on these other systems. Yeah, sort of I just opening space for people to do that. Like, what’s been funny about this work, is that and we, we spoke about transformative justice recently, Sami, but like, we’re just winging it, you know, like, is that like, it’s not something that you’re like really qualified in. It’s something that like, you draw from, like, your lived experiences, and you’re reading and you’re speaking to people, and actually, you just open space for people to tap into the skills that they already have, and to tap into the skills that they want to learn. And then it’s like, okay, so people over here have been doing it this way. Now, I know that that exists. Let me think about what it would take for me to learn how to do that. And just knowing that other people are taking it upon themselves, really, like, gives people licence, I think, to start doing it. And yeah, that’s something that I find really great about transformative justice. And that’s what we did on this on this tour last summer is like all across the south was just moved from place to place just being like, this is what i doing over there. And then they’d be like, cool. Let’s try and do something like that here, or that’s why that exactly wouldn’t work. But what we have is this and like, it would just, yeah, it was this great way of just like building all these collective skills that people are doing often in isolation. And actually thinking about that, that collective skill set is is something that I think makes it feel very possible, you know? Yeah,

Ali: yeah, that’s definitely something I can vibe with. And I was doing some reading earlier today, as part of abolitionist futures reading group stuff. And it was about ending violence in our communities. And the beginning part was just so massive, I was feeling really overwhelmed by like, all the different aspects which needed to be done. And I was like, Oh, God, I can’t do all this stuff and community organising and transform the system. And then later in the article, they kind of broke it down into like, some people are gonna be healers, some people are gonna be educators. And I was like, okay, like, I don’t have to do everything. But I can do some of these things already, like, yes, that’s great.

Ali: so that kind of leads me on to the last question that we like to end this podcast on, which is shown, like, if someone’s been listening, and is feeling inspired to get involved in like, abolitionists work or campaigns against prison expansion, what should they do? How can they get involved in that kind of stuff?

Kelsey: Um, I mean, I think those reading groups are really great abolitionist features, ones on the black abolitionist reading group. And all of those readings are online and stuff. I think, sort of like taking control of doing your own learning and all these kinds of things is like really important, and a great first step. But, yeah, I think, basically, there will be, I just wish I had like a date to plug. But there will be if you follow CAPE community action on prison expansion, or no more prisons on Instagram is also what we call which is simpler. Yes, please, if you could share these in the show notes. Then there’s, yeah, we’re trying to like, there are things brewing, to get more people involved in the fight against prison expansion, there will be events, for political learning, but also planning and thinking about how in your local areas you can, like start a group that’s against prison expansion, and, you know, starting to create toolkits and stuff. So that’s all coming. So follow us on social media site, there is a petition, but I just really hate plugin petitions. But it is important to do that too. But there is a petition, if you just don’t want them to build prisons, you can sign that as a great first step to get as many people to show that they don’t want that as as possible. And yeah, I think that’s most of the things. Email us if you want to get involved basically.

Ali: A massive thank you to Kelsey for being our first guest on the podcast, from Community Action on Prison Expansion. If you want to check out more about cape, you can find them at Cape-campaign.org. They are at no more prisons on Instagram, and cape expansion on Twitter.

Ali: This week, we’ve also had music from a Jack Light with his song “right to say”, which you can find on Spotify. And if you want to find out any more about Resist Renew as a facilitation and training collective, we’re at Resistrenew.com and on all the other socials. And if you’d like to support the production of this podcast, we have a donate page on our website where you can donate via PayPal. Thanks for listening and hope to catch you next week. Bye bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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