About Us
Dismantling the Prison Industrial Complex Brick by Brick
Our Vision
The IWCSP envisions a world characterized by abundance, freedom, care, reparation, and the flourishing of human and non-human life. We believe that prisons and policing are an obstacle to that goal. Rooted in histories of racial capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism; prisons and police produce harm, scarcity, punishment, disability, incarceration, and death. We seek to abolish the conditions that make prisons and police possible in the first place.
In order to advance these long-term goals, our short-term strategy is to support and organize with womxn, trans, and nonbinary people in their efforts to free themselves through parole, clemency, and commutation, and to support them upon their release. We have adopted this strategy in order to foster relationships between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people, draw attention to the criminalization of womxn, trans, and nonbinary people of color, and help friends, loved ones, and family of incarcerated people to navigate processes designed to alienate them from their incarcerated loved ones.The IWCSP is part of a long history of movement organizing, fighting for the release of and amplifying demands of incarcerated people while actively building and practicing the kinds of communities and world that we want to live in.
Our Mission
The IWCSP is a Virginia-based collective of prison abolitionists working for the release of womxn, trans, and nonbinary people incarcerated in Virginia through pardons, parole and sentence commutations and offering various forms of community-based care and support.
Our Area of Focus
Our advocacy and organizing work will focus on people serving Life Without Parole; people whose arrest, conviction and/or sentencing were tainted, in whole or in part, by racial and gender bias; pregnant people who are alleged to have self-terminated a pregnancy or had an abortion in a state where it has been banned; and survivors who have experienced sexual violence while incarcerated, are alleged to have failed to protect their children from the abuse of an intimate partner, and who used violence and/or deadly force to protect and defend themselves and/or their children from intimate partner and sexual violence.
While we are not practicing lawyers offering legal assistance, our membership includes paralegals and law students and we intend to work with lawyers in securing support for clemency applications.
Images sourced from People Against Prisons Aotearoa and anonymous inside artist