Glossary
Abolition
To abolish - or get rid of - an institution, system, or practice. In the case of prison abolition, abolition doesn’t just mean dismantling the prison industrial complex, or tearing down a system of oppression. Abolition focuses on restructuring society to create a world where prisons are no longer necessary, as the factors that lead to mass incarceration are no longer there.
Capitalism
An economic and political system where private actors control property that they own while acting according to their own interests instead of the interests of the state. Capitalism prioritizes profit and individualism and dismisses ideas of collective gain in favor of private gain.
Colonialism
The practice of securing full or partial control of another country, implanting it with settlers and exploiting it economically. Colonialism in Canada and the United States is closely associated with white supremacy. Colonialism is not a single act or a practice of the past, but asserted with each day of settler occupation.
Criminal
A label given to a person by the legal system to denote who has been a perpetrator of crime.
Deputizing
The act of making one a deputy. The act of a person or group deciding to take the law into their own hands, or the act of standing in for a policing system, such as through neighborhood watches or tip lines.
Feminism
A range of social movements that advocate for the political, economic, and social equity of the sexes. Feminism shines a spotlight on social inequity and on the negative view that all things feminine have in dominant society, as well as the ways in which other social categories intersect with sex and gender.
Intersectionality
An analytical framework created by Kimberle Crenshaw to describe the ways that different social categories, such as race, gender, and class overlap and are affected by power. This framework acknowledges that categories do not exist in a bubble, and there are many ways that dominant power can affect people in different ways.
Patriarchy
An underlying system of power in society that holds men as the most important and valuable members in society, while excluding and exploiting women and views of femininity as undesirable.
Prison Industrial Complex
The way that the interests of the government overlap with industries that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to problems derived from the inequity of capitalism. The prison system is privatized and funded by governments, and the system works to uphold the established regime of capitalism and pro-military and pro-surveillance mindsets in society.
Racism
Rampant, systemic acts of violence and exploitation against a non-dominant group by the dominant group in power. The structures of the dominant society will reinforce the existing power while ensuring that the non-dominant group remains powerless.
Reform
The act of editing or changing certain parts of an existing system, structure, or ideal in the hopes of improving it. However, reform does not question the existence of the system, structure, or ideal that it is attempting to reform.
Restorative Justice
To approach justice not from a lens of crime and punishment, but from a lens of repairing harm. This approach allows the victim of harm and the perpetrator of harm to discuss their needs following a crime, and allows the perpetrator of harm to take responsibility for their actions. To offer an example: peer mediation in schools, or programs that seek to educate rather than to punish children in schools.
School to Prison Pipeline
Generally used to refer to the joining of structural and individual relationships that funnel children (primarily youth of colour) from schools and neighborhoods into under – or unemployment and prisons. This is often done through excessive suspensions, expulsions, arrests and an overreliance on test taking.
School Resource Officer
A law enforcement officer with arrest authority, who (sometimes) has specialized training and is assigned to work with school organizations.
Sexism
Systematic attitudes, ideology, and beliefs that position men as deservedly superior to women, while encouraging the oppression of women or acts of femininity in any body.
Transformative Justice
A political framework that focuses on the response to harm and violence. This approach seeks to respond to harm without creating more harm. This focus does not rely on government systems or states, but rather puts the focus of responding to harm into a community-minded approach, where all voices are heard and violence is not perpetuated. Transformative justice focuses on preventing harm by taking into account the factors that lead to harm and accounting for them at the root of the problem.
Whiteness
An unstable category that is created by drastic power imbalances that are then enforced in the structures of society. Power and violence support whiteness as it enjoys privileges that others do not have, while exploiting and enacting violence against those who do not benefit from whiteness.
White Supremacy
A hierarchical ideology that places whiteness at the top. In elevating whiteness, white supremacy informs and fuels anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism. White supremacy is never personal, individual or isolated; instead white supremacy is a global phenomenon that has been used to justify atrocities against Black, Indigenous and people of colour for centuries. Part of why white supremacy is so successful is because it refuses to be named or blamed for the violence it causes.