I want us to build a different world a
world without so much harm without so
much violence when people think about
gender-based violence they often think
about interpersonal violence they focus
on things like partner abuse abuse and
Families date rape and this focus is
important and essential but it isn’t
enough building a world without violence
also requires us to address the violence
and instance of institutions and the
state I have spent the last decade
working in the women’s sector supporting
women in prison and women on the margins
women who experience institutional
violence these women have been
continually let down and abandoned by
society their experiences of the care
system of poor education of housing of
inadequate mental health and addiction
support of economic injustice all tell
us a story of wider inequalities a story
that tells us we need to broaden our
lens we need to think about structural
violence when I say I worked for the
women’s sector I’m referring broadly to
the network of grassroots groups and
formal organizations led by and for
women providing safe spaces and services
for women some of these groups are issue
based addressing things like domestic
violence or housing or there’s a
community focus such as women’s centers
or identity focus like on our Geryon
women’s organizations others are advice
policy campaigning membership bodies
they’re broadly united in a goal of
challenging oppression and structural
inequalities and improving rights for
women we are united in a struggle for
freedom I struggled for liberation there
are so many amazingly inspirational
women and organizations fighting to keep
women’s services open against this
difficult and hostile backdrop in these
times of austerity policies policies
that disproportionately are affecting
women demand for their services has
increased by 85 percent
where their funding has fallen by 50%
but challenging as these times are
externally I’ve also become convinced
that the women’s sector will never be
successful in our goals if we continue
on the path we’re currently on we need
something radically internally to change
what we’re currently doing isn’t working
we are facing a number of interconnected
problems that prevent us from achieving
our broad goals and these problems are
locking us out of the path we need to be
on so today I’m going to talk to you
about what those problems are and how
they’re preventing us from building the
world we want I’m going to suggest that
another way is possible that there’s a
key to understanding this lock you see
the big problem is the women’s sector
has been co-opted it has been swallowed
up by government policies that are
withdrawing support from people on the
one hand while increasing punishment and
control and the other governments that
won’t build council housing yet are
building more and more prisons there are
three main problems that we need to
unlock to understand this co-option
first the character of our work has
shifted from political organizing to one
of service provision second we’ve become
trapped in the business funding model
and third we’ve become too enmeshed in
the criminal justice system so these
three things together depoliticization
funding and the criminal justice system
have caused the women’s sector to become
co-opted the women’s sector began as a
grassroots movement for radical social
change
now we’ve largely become d politicized
service providers so let’s look at D
politicization we develop vital services
for women like domestic violence refuges
rape crisis centers counselling services
and it’s important to keep those
services going and ensured of a survival
of the sector but the problem is that
we’ve begun to act as if those services
are the solution in themselves rather
than demanding transformative social and
structural change we now take our
purpose is to provide good services to
respond to problems rather than to
change challenge the conditions that
created these problems in the first
place
service provision was and is important
but it was never meant to be the only
thing or even the main thing we did it
was supposed to be a stopgap measure on
the way to radical change part of
providing services and support was a
survival strategy which grew from
understanding that basic needs need to
be met before people could confront the
conditions causing their distress that
people need to be supported on the way
to being politicized but in focusing
more and more energy and services
provision for individuals we got less
political we lost sight of our bigger
goals part of the reason why
organizations focus so much on time and
service provision rather than movement
building is because they have no choice
under the current funding model so let’s
talk about funding everyone agrees that
funding is a problem however most people
think the problem is a shortage of money
but vital services are being drastically
cut and underfunded and we do need to
keep them going
we do need resources to meet more to
meet increasing needs but the problem is
bigger than that the problem is also
about the very model of funding it’s a
problem for the women’s sector it’s what
money does to our mission I don’t know
if money changes people but I know it
can change organizations currently
funding primarily focuses on services
and these services primarily focus on
individuals we have bought into this
notion that problems are located in
individuals and solutions must also lie
in individuals focusing responsibility
and services on the individuals
themselves like giving tenancy advice to
a woman with no housing during our
housing crisis we are focusing on the
fish rather than the water the current
funding model increasingly operates on
business principles like a competitive
market the women’s sector organizations
constantly have to compete for funding
and this money is tied to short-term
projects and services accompanied by
lots of strings outcomes and reporting
measures all sorts of indicators and
measurements need to be met and evidence
and endless amounts of paperwork that’s
oh that’s ramped up to fire signal
levels at the moment often way beyond
the info
structural capacities of small voluntary
sector organisations and women receiving
services begin to feel like they’re
being processed and workers like their
processing and priorities change away
from building relationships towards
feeding this database the very language
being spoken in organisations changes as
contracts speak seeps in what begins to
count is not what actually happens but
what’s on the database what’s in the
report the story about the work becomes
more important than the work when old
funders seem to want as innovation new
solutions it’s hard to keep reinventing
what you’re doing because meaningful
change takes time and persistence but
projects are only funded for two to
three years trust me even reading these
funding applications can take days and
the sector is forced to competing
against large providers whose job it is
to win money but it goes deeper than
that it’s not just that we’re forced to
constantly chase after money or write
reports it’s that we’ve started to
follow funders priorities rather than
following our own organisations reframe
their work they start doing new types of
work they start working in whole other
areas to fit funder priorities and
funding like anything as fashion cycles
charities are increasingly being
criticized for being irrelevant for
becoming disconnected from their roots
looking more like businesses corporate
branding corporate language corporate
roles larger women’s organizations are
expanding and eating of money and
contracts for work that was previously
done by local small BME led by and for
organizations who have closer ties with
their communities and often a stronger
critical analysis and these smaller
community focused organizations are
being forced to the brink we are
becoming too distant
who are we accountable to our funders or
our movement and the people we serve we
are losing our sense of community we are
losing our sense of solidarity and
funding also affects our voice it
affects the independence of
organisations because government funding
comes with gagging clauses meaning
organisations in receipt of funding
can’t engage in lobbying to challenge
government policies and even when it’s
not explicitly directed in funding
contracts organizations often
self-censor for fear of being seen as
biting the hand that feeds them the
government doesn’t want to hear about
structured critical analysis they’re not
comfortable with being told their
policies are causing harm and things
need to change but that’s the remit of
the women’s sector which is both at risk
and putting them at risk the biggest
problem I see though is that money has
trapped us on a funding carousel that
limits our imagination
our independence and narrows our vision
for change part of the reason why our
vision has become so narrow is a lot of
funding is filtered through the criminal
justice system this system is organized
around punishment surveillance and
control so those criminal justice values
seep into our funding which seeps into
our women sector and it seeps into the
work as a result the women’s sector has
become too closely entwined with the
criminal justice system so let’s talk
about the criminal justice system when
the women’s movement started it was
generally quite skeptical about the
criminal justice system because police
and other government institutions didn’t
take women’s safety seriously
so some strands of feminist movement
started working with and within the
criminal justice system advocating for
reforms training the police created
Victim Services calling for changes in
law to better protect women for
additional offenses and increased
sentence lengths but looking back at
this strategy over the last 30 years we
see that despite some gains over all
focusing on this approach hasn’t worked
it hasn’t actually made most women safer
rates of domestic violence sexual
assault and domestic murders are largely
unchanged women’s still struggle to
access justice and this is also
contributed to the growth of the prison
population we wanted this violence to be
taken seriously as a crime and assuming
we could reform sexist institutions and
that the police could protect women we
organized their services aligned in the
criminal justice system
and for some privileged women this
worked but for a lot of women it didn’t
work particularly women of color migrant
women queer and trans women sex workers
women with addictions and mental health
problems women from the Gypsy and
traveler community women whose
relationship with the police might
already be strained it only made things
worse
a lot of marginalized women have
increasingly been caught up in the
criminal justice system itself the
women’s prison population has doubled
since 1993 by working so closely with
the criminal justice system we
inadvertently started adopting the
logics of a carceral system logics that
I have hurt more women than they’ve
helped one of the most fundamental
assumptions being that punishment is
somehow supposed to be the route to
bring about change that punishment that
happens after harm can prevent further
harms the criminal justice system is
based on retributive justice a
law-and-order model that doesn’t focus
on prevention or give people the support
they need to change it doesn’t work our
prisons are now overcrowded in other
crisis violence and drugs are rife and
deaths in custody I’ve never been higher
in arguing for punishment for abusers of
women we strengthen the criminal justice
system and inadvertently supported the
punishment of victims particularly those
marginalized those who don’t fit the
right kind of victim narrative we
created a contradiction we want the
system to be transformative for victims
but punitive for perpetrators the
reality is it can’t be those two things
it doesn’t work for either victims or
perpetrators the very dichotomy a victim
perpetrator doesn’t hold true most
people who harm have already been harmed
there is a cycle of harm that lives
within us within our society within our
social relations dealing with the
problem of violence through focusing on
individuals meanwhile overlooking the
violence of the system itself and the
harm in perpetrates won’t work the
problem is that our imagination as well
as our movement has been co-opted our
vision has narrowed and we need to widen
it again we need to build the world we
want not the world we think we can get
as Angela Davis said you have to act as
if it was possible to radically
transform the world and you have to do
it all the time Angela Davis is a black
feminist prison abolitionist unlike
others committed to ending gender-based
violence committed to addressing harm
abolitionists don’t believe prison will
ever be the means of achieving that goal
because prison is part of the cycle of
harm part of state violence that must be
dismantled on the path to achieving
wider gender racial and economic social
justice and I think that feminist prison
abolition is a key to helping us unlock
these problems disruptive thinking like
feminist prison abolition is what we
need now to guard against the co-option
of our social movements feminist prison
abolition invites us to disrupt how we
think what if prisons doesn’t make us
safer what if we took all or at least
half the resources away from the
criminal justice system and used it to
prevent harm to tackle problems at their
roots maybe put it in things like health
care housing education feminist prison
abolition recognizes that the mainstream
anti-violence movement reinforces the
criminal justice system by trying to
stop things happening through
legislation by increasing sentence
lengths by locating all the support
within the criminal justice system while
this state is punishing and controlling
people and defunding our welfare while
they build prisons not houses and you
might be thinking feminist prison
abolition
sounds like a far-fetched idea that we
need to be realistic but what if being
realistic is actually just being
complicit with the status quo and we all
know the status quo needs to change
radical goals can help us keep our lens
wide they help us keep institutional
harm as well as interpersonal harm and
view to avoid the traps of reform that
don’t have structural change as a goal
having a big bold vision like
feminist prison abolition might get us
where we need to go feminist prison
abolition invites us to take a long view
to know that structures change and get
dismantled that we are part of that
change that wave of possibility that
will take us to a better world so what
should we do when we’re developing
strategies we need to ask ourselves are
we prioritize providing support to
survive a broken system or is this about
changing the system we need to focus our
energy on movement building because
service provision isn’t enough finding
inspiration from women who’ve gone
before us and reaching out and
harnessing and building on the
enthusiasm and activism of women as they
rise up now we need to prioritize
movement over money we need to change
our funding models to remember who we’re
accountable to it’s not that we don’t
want money to do the work it’s that
needs to be done but we can’t continue
having priorities set by governments by
funding foundation trusts by wealthy
philanthropists the system is working
for them they don’t need it to change we
need to develop solutions outside the
criminal justice system we need to focus
as much energy if not more into building
strong communities we ourselves you and
me need to support and build capacity
for everyone to address violence we need
more focus on transformative justice
principles as insight women of color
against violence say the revolution will
not be funded we will never gain freedom
of oppression through a system which is
itself oppressive we will never gain
liberation from a system designed to
take freedom and we will never free
ourselves from harm to a system that is
harmful working towards inclusion
connection and belonging as our primary
goal and centering the most marginalized
we seek to build solutions that are not
reliant on our current systems of
criminal justice funding we build other
ways of caring for each other we imagine
a world without prison we work towards
that are as our goal
and together we can make the world we want
world without so much harm without so
much violence when people think about
gender-based violence they often think
about interpersonal violence they focus
on things like partner abuse abuse and
Families date rape and this focus is
important and essential but it isn’t
enough building a world without violence
also requires us to address the violence
and instance of institutions and the
state I have spent the last decade
working in the women’s sector supporting
women in prison and women on the margins
women who experience institutional
violence these women have been
continually let down and abandoned by
society their experiences of the care
system of poor education of housing of
inadequate mental health and addiction
support of economic injustice all tell
us a story of wider inequalities a story
that tells us we need to broaden our
lens we need to think about structural
violence when I say I worked for the
women’s sector I’m referring broadly to
the network of grassroots groups and
formal organizations led by and for
women providing safe spaces and services
for women some of these groups are issue
based addressing things like domestic
violence or housing or there’s a
community focus such as women’s centers
or identity focus like on our Geryon
women’s organizations others are advice
policy campaigning membership bodies
they’re broadly united in a goal of
challenging oppression and structural
inequalities and improving rights for
women we are united in a struggle for
freedom I struggled for liberation there
are so many amazingly inspirational
women and organizations fighting to keep
women’s services open against this
difficult and hostile backdrop in these
times of austerity policies policies
that disproportionately are affecting
women demand for their services has
increased by 85 percent
where their funding has fallen by 50%
but challenging as these times are
externally I’ve also become convinced
that the women’s sector will never be
successful in our goals if we continue
on the path we’re currently on we need
something radically internally to change
what we’re currently doing isn’t working
we are facing a number of interconnected
problems that prevent us from achieving
our broad goals and these problems are
locking us out of the path we need to be
on so today I’m going to talk to you
about what those problems are and how
they’re preventing us from building the
world we want I’m going to suggest that
another way is possible that there’s a
key to understanding this lock you see
the big problem is the women’s sector
has been co-opted it has been swallowed
up by government policies that are
withdrawing support from people on the
one hand while increasing punishment and
control and the other governments that
won’t build council housing yet are
building more and more prisons there are
three main problems that we need to
unlock to understand this co-option
first the character of our work has
shifted from political organizing to one
of service provision second we’ve become
trapped in the business funding model
and third we’ve become too enmeshed in
the criminal justice system so these
three things together depoliticization
funding and the criminal justice system
have caused the women’s sector to become
co-opted the women’s sector began as a
grassroots movement for radical social
change
now we’ve largely become d politicized
service providers so let’s look at D
politicization we develop vital services
for women like domestic violence refuges
rape crisis centers counselling services
and it’s important to keep those
services going and ensured of a survival
of the sector but the problem is that
we’ve begun to act as if those services
are the solution in themselves rather
than demanding transformative social and
structural change we now take our
purpose is to provide good services to
respond to problems rather than to
change challenge the conditions that
created these problems in the first
place
service provision was and is important
but it was never meant to be the only
thing or even the main thing we did it
was supposed to be a stopgap measure on
the way to radical change part of
providing services and support was a
survival strategy which grew from
understanding that basic needs need to
be met before people could confront the
conditions causing their distress that
people need to be supported on the way
to being politicized but in focusing
more and more energy and services
provision for individuals we got less
political we lost sight of our bigger
goals part of the reason why
organizations focus so much on time and
service provision rather than movement
building is because they have no choice
under the current funding model so let’s
talk about funding everyone agrees that
funding is a problem however most people
think the problem is a shortage of money
but vital services are being drastically
cut and underfunded and we do need to
keep them going
we do need resources to meet more to
meet increasing needs but the problem is
bigger than that the problem is also
about the very model of funding it’s a
problem for the women’s sector it’s what
money does to our mission I don’t know
if money changes people but I know it
can change organizations currently
funding primarily focuses on services
and these services primarily focus on
individuals we have bought into this
notion that problems are located in
individuals and solutions must also lie
in individuals focusing responsibility
and services on the individuals
themselves like giving tenancy advice to
a woman with no housing during our
housing crisis we are focusing on the
fish rather than the water the current
funding model increasingly operates on
business principles like a competitive
market the women’s sector organizations
constantly have to compete for funding
and this money is tied to short-term
projects and services accompanied by
lots of strings outcomes and reporting
measures all sorts of indicators and
measurements need to be met and evidence
and endless amounts of paperwork that’s
oh that’s ramped up to fire signal
levels at the moment often way beyond
the info
structural capacities of small voluntary
sector organisations and women receiving
services begin to feel like they’re
being processed and workers like their
processing and priorities change away
from building relationships towards
feeding this database the very language
being spoken in organisations changes as
contracts speak seeps in what begins to
count is not what actually happens but
what’s on the database what’s in the
report the story about the work becomes
more important than the work when old
funders seem to want as innovation new
solutions it’s hard to keep reinventing
what you’re doing because meaningful
change takes time and persistence but
projects are only funded for two to
three years trust me even reading these
funding applications can take days and
the sector is forced to competing
against large providers whose job it is
to win money but it goes deeper than
that it’s not just that we’re forced to
constantly chase after money or write
reports it’s that we’ve started to
follow funders priorities rather than
following our own organisations reframe
their work they start doing new types of
work they start working in whole other
areas to fit funder priorities and
funding like anything as fashion cycles
charities are increasingly being
criticized for being irrelevant for
becoming disconnected from their roots
looking more like businesses corporate
branding corporate language corporate
roles larger women’s organizations are
expanding and eating of money and
contracts for work that was previously
done by local small BME led by and for
organizations who have closer ties with
their communities and often a stronger
critical analysis and these smaller
community focused organizations are
being forced to the brink we are
becoming too distant
who are we accountable to our funders or
our movement and the people we serve we
are losing our sense of community we are
losing our sense of solidarity and
funding also affects our voice it
affects the independence of
organisations because government funding
comes with gagging clauses meaning
organisations in receipt of funding
can’t engage in lobbying to challenge
government policies and even when it’s
not explicitly directed in funding
contracts organizations often
self-censor for fear of being seen as
biting the hand that feeds them the
government doesn’t want to hear about
structured critical analysis they’re not
comfortable with being told their
policies are causing harm and things
need to change but that’s the remit of
the women’s sector which is both at risk
and putting them at risk the biggest
problem I see though is that money has
trapped us on a funding carousel that
limits our imagination
our independence and narrows our vision
for change part of the reason why our
vision has become so narrow is a lot of
funding is filtered through the criminal
justice system this system is organized
around punishment surveillance and
control so those criminal justice values
seep into our funding which seeps into
our women sector and it seeps into the
work as a result the women’s sector has
become too closely entwined with the
criminal justice system so let’s talk
about the criminal justice system when
the women’s movement started it was
generally quite skeptical about the
criminal justice system because police
and other government institutions didn’t
take women’s safety seriously
so some strands of feminist movement
started working with and within the
criminal justice system advocating for
reforms training the police created
Victim Services calling for changes in
law to better protect women for
additional offenses and increased
sentence lengths but looking back at
this strategy over the last 30 years we
see that despite some gains over all
focusing on this approach hasn’t worked
it hasn’t actually made most women safer
rates of domestic violence sexual
assault and domestic murders are largely
unchanged women’s still struggle to
access justice and this is also
contributed to the growth of the prison
population we wanted this violence to be
taken seriously as a crime and assuming
we could reform sexist institutions and
that the police could protect women we
organized their services aligned in the
criminal justice system
and for some privileged women this
worked but for a lot of women it didn’t
work particularly women of color migrant
women queer and trans women sex workers
women with addictions and mental health
problems women from the Gypsy and
traveler community women whose
relationship with the police might
already be strained it only made things
worse
a lot of marginalized women have
increasingly been caught up in the
criminal justice system itself the
women’s prison population has doubled
since 1993 by working so closely with
the criminal justice system we
inadvertently started adopting the
logics of a carceral system logics that
I have hurt more women than they’ve
helped one of the most fundamental
assumptions being that punishment is
somehow supposed to be the route to
bring about change that punishment that
happens after harm can prevent further
harms the criminal justice system is
based on retributive justice a
law-and-order model that doesn’t focus
on prevention or give people the support
they need to change it doesn’t work our
prisons are now overcrowded in other
crisis violence and drugs are rife and
deaths in custody I’ve never been higher
in arguing for punishment for abusers of
women we strengthen the criminal justice
system and inadvertently supported the
punishment of victims particularly those
marginalized those who don’t fit the
right kind of victim narrative we
created a contradiction we want the
system to be transformative for victims
but punitive for perpetrators the
reality is it can’t be those two things
it doesn’t work for either victims or
perpetrators the very dichotomy a victim
perpetrator doesn’t hold true most
people who harm have already been harmed
there is a cycle of harm that lives
within us within our society within our
social relations dealing with the
problem of violence through focusing on
individuals meanwhile overlooking the
violence of the system itself and the
harm in perpetrates won’t work the
problem is that our imagination as well
as our movement has been co-opted our
vision has narrowed and we need to widen
it again we need to build the world we
want not the world we think we can get
as Angela Davis said you have to act as
if it was possible to radically
transform the world and you have to do
it all the time Angela Davis is a black
feminist prison abolitionist unlike
others committed to ending gender-based
violence committed to addressing harm
abolitionists don’t believe prison will
ever be the means of achieving that goal
because prison is part of the cycle of
harm part of state violence that must be
dismantled on the path to achieving
wider gender racial and economic social
justice and I think that feminist prison
abolition is a key to helping us unlock
these problems disruptive thinking like
feminist prison abolition is what we
need now to guard against the co-option
of our social movements feminist prison
abolition invites us to disrupt how we
think what if prisons doesn’t make us
safer what if we took all or at least
half the resources away from the
criminal justice system and used it to
prevent harm to tackle problems at their
roots maybe put it in things like health
care housing education feminist prison
abolition recognizes that the mainstream
anti-violence movement reinforces the
criminal justice system by trying to
stop things happening through
legislation by increasing sentence
lengths by locating all the support
within the criminal justice system while
this state is punishing and controlling
people and defunding our welfare while
they build prisons not houses and you
might be thinking feminist prison
abolition
sounds like a far-fetched idea that we
need to be realistic but what if being
realistic is actually just being
complicit with the status quo and we all
know the status quo needs to change
radical goals can help us keep our lens
wide they help us keep institutional
harm as well as interpersonal harm and
view to avoid the traps of reform that
don’t have structural change as a goal
having a big bold vision like
feminist prison abolition might get us
where we need to go feminist prison
abolition invites us to take a long view
to know that structures change and get
dismantled that we are part of that
change that wave of possibility that
will take us to a better world so what
should we do when we’re developing
strategies we need to ask ourselves are
we prioritize providing support to
survive a broken system or is this about
changing the system we need to focus our
energy on movement building because
service provision isn’t enough finding
inspiration from women who’ve gone
before us and reaching out and
harnessing and building on the
enthusiasm and activism of women as they
rise up now we need to prioritize
movement over money we need to change
our funding models to remember who we’re
accountable to it’s not that we don’t
want money to do the work it’s that
needs to be done but we can’t continue
having priorities set by governments by
funding foundation trusts by wealthy
philanthropists the system is working
for them they don’t need it to change we
need to develop solutions outside the
criminal justice system we need to focus
as much energy if not more into building
strong communities we ourselves you and
me need to support and build capacity
for everyone to address violence we need
more focus on transformative justice
principles as insight women of color
against violence say the revolution will
not be funded we will never gain freedom
of oppression through a system which is
itself oppressive we will never gain
liberation from a system designed to
take freedom and we will never free
ourselves from harm to a system that is
harmful working towards inclusion
connection and belonging as our primary
goal and centering the most marginalized
we seek to build solutions that are not
reliant on our current systems of
criminal justice funding we build other
ways of caring for each other we imagine
a world without prison we work towards
that are as our goal
and together we can make the world we want
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