Prisoners’ Justice Day - 10 August

International Prisoners' Justice Day on 10 August is a reminder that we must end the violence of human caging and fight against the world that allows it to exist. When you look at who's in prison in countries around the world, it is so obvious that prisons have been and are tools of colonising empires and capitalism. Prisons are blatant examples of the criminalisation of the indigenous, of the poor, of people identified as 'other' and different by states the world over. In this country the reality of our history of colonisation is laid bare: Māori are vastly over-represented in prison statistics. It is in prisons that the racist and class nature of capitalism is clearly exposed. The fight to end prisons is a fight for a just world.


At the Freedom Shop we have some books and zines about prison, including:

  • Hell Is A Very Small Place: Voices From Solitary Confinement by Jean Casella
  • Taking the Rap: Women Doing Time for Society's Crimes by Ann Hansen
  • Hauling Up the Morning edited by Tim Blunk & Raymond Luc Levasseur
  • Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising by Staughton Lynd
  • Writers in Prison by Ioan Davies
  • Abolition Now! Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex by the CR-10 Publications Collective

 

One of the zines we have is our very own 'Prison Abolition' which includes writings from aargh!, Aotearoa Indymedia, imminent rebellion and PAPA. An online journal to read is 'Paper Chained' - an Australian based journal written by those who are or have been incarcerated. One short story by Sojourn, who writes in 'Prison Abolition', also appears in issue 2 of Paper Chained.

If you want to get involved in the prison abolition movement in this country, do check out PAPA

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