Courts and the Abolition Movement

California Law Review

In "Courts and the Abolition Movement," Professor Matthew Clair and Director Amanda Woog discuss how criminal courts perpetuate mass criminalization and injustice, and the advantages of replacing these courts using abolitionist principles. Author: Matthew Clair is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and (by courtesy) Law at Stanford University. Author: Amanda Woog is the Executive Director of the Texas Fair Defense Project. Host: Ximena Velazquez-Arenas Technology Editors: NoahLani Litwinsella (Volume 110 Senior Technology Editor), Carter Jansen (Volume 110 Technology Editor), Hiep Nguyen (Volume 111 Senior Technology Editor), Taylor Graham (Volume 111 Technology Editor), Benjamin Martinez (Volume 111 Technology Editor) Other Editors: Ximena Velazquez-Arenas (Volume 111 Senior Diversity Editor), Jacob Binder (Volume 111 Associate Editor), Michaela Park (Volume 111 Associate Editor), Kat King (Volume 111 Publishing Editor) Soundtrack: Composed and performed by Carter Jansen Article Abstract: This Article theorizes and reimagines the place of courts in the contemporary struggle for the abolition of racialized punitive systems of legal control and exploitation. In the spring and summer of 2020, the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black and Indigenous people sparked continuous protests against racist police violence and other forms of oppression. Meanwhile, abolitionist organizers and scholars have long critiqued the prison-industrial complex, or the constellation of corporations, media entities, governmental actors, and racist and capitalist ideologies that have driven mass incarceration. But between the police and the prison cell sits the criminal court. Criminal courts are the legal pathway from an arrest to a prison sentence, with myriad systems of control in between, including ones branded as “off-ramps.” We cannot understand the present crisis without understanding how the criminal courts not only function to legitimate police and funnel people into carceral spaces but also contribute their own unique forms of violence, social control, and exploitation. These mechanisms reveal the machinations of mass criminalization and the injustices operating between the police encounter and the prison cell. Our central argument is that courts—with a focus here on criminal trial courts and the group of actors within them—function as an unjust social institution. We should therefore work toward abolishing criminal courts and replacing them with other institutions that do not inherently legitimate police, rely on jails and prisons, or operate as tools of racial and economic oppression.