About This Guide

Abolitionist scholar and activist, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, teaches us that “abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.” Public health education teaches us to transform systems to create wellbeing for the most people possible. Public health defines health not as merely the absence of disease, but as addressing all of the conditions and determinants that we know create health and wellbeing at the community and population levels. On its face, public health is working to create the life-affirming institutions that Gilmore challenges us all to build.

Logics of policing and prisons are mirrored in many facets of our society, including our public health systems and institutions. In order to best answer the calls by those most impacted we draw from abolitionist organizing and frameworks to end the role of policing, incarceration, and punishment in our health systems. This learning and action guide was developed to respond to the ask from people impacted by the criminal legal system that public health practitioners:

• Be responsive to the negative health impacts of the criminal legal system 
• Change the ways in which public health systems collaborate with, mirror, and increase the scope and legitimacy of the criminal legal system 
• Use the public health platform to advocate for policy and programs that address root problems of health inequities and invest in true forms of public safety