APE’s purpose is – through collective learning, direct action and prisoner solidarity – to counter the ideology of law-and-order that legitimates an increasingly powerful state machine. We aim to challenge prevailing attitudes to crime and delinquency, by exploring existing alternatives and models to the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC).
On the whole, prison abolition requires us to imagine a society with alternative solutions and the ultimate aim to remove prisons from the social and ideological landscape of our society. There is a vast amount of evidence that prisons don’t produce safe communities. Food, shelter, education, health and freedom are really what helps create healthy and thriving communities. Can you say that all humans in your community have access to these basic necessities?
We have taken much of our inspiration from Communities of Resistance (CoRe) and share their long-term goal, which is to build a vibrant and broad-based movement to end the violence of incarceration, aiming to develop effective, community-based solutions to social problems that do not rely on models of imprisonment. We also see our work as connected to broader global struggles for equality, freedom and mutual aid.
Alternatives to Prison Edinburgh (APE) will campaign on several issues on criminal justice and the Prison Industrial Complex. We hope APE will combine a campaign on prison abolition with campaigns on matters such as prison labour, women in prisons, titan prisons, privatisation of prisons, criminalisation of queer trans and gender variant persons, race, youth and mental issues, detention of asylum seekers, and other issues relating to persons who break the law and people in prison. We also aim to do prisoner support and solidarity with an emphasis on prisoner involvement and prisoner unions. We also produce propaganda to redress to perception of who are really in prisons and explain why prisons do not work and will host discussions on alternatives to prison such as bail and therapeutic residences, community supervision, restoration, treatment and legal restraint remedies, in addition to co-operative solutions like community conflict resolution, victim offender reconciliation, sentencing circles, circles of support and accountability and community responses to sexual assault and intimate violence.
APE will be meeting monthly at:
The Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh (ACE)
17 West Montgomery Place, Edinburgh EH7 5HA
For further information contact us at ape93208 [at] live.co.uk
Alternatives 2 Prison
http://www.alternatives2prison.ik.com/
Anarchist Black Cross Federation
http://www.abcf.net/
Campaign Against Prison Slavery
http://www.againstprisonslavery.org/
Communities of Resistance (CoRe)
http://www.co-re.org/
Critical Resistance
http://www.criticalresistance.org/
Miscarriages of Justice Scotland
http://www.mojoscotland.com/
Prison Activist Resource Centre
http://www.prisonactivist.org/
Prisoner Advise Service
http://www.prisonersadvice.org.uk/
Restorative Justice
http://www.resorativejustice.org/
Women In Prison
http://www.womeninprison.org.uk/
Collective 325
http://www.325collective.com/
