Abolition as World-Building

By Katharina Swirak*

‍A common misunderstanding about ‘penal abolition’ is that the abolitionist project is mainly interested in dismantling existing systems of punishment, getting rid of prisons, and, beyond that, simply tearing down unjust systems, institutions and processes in the world as we know it. These assumptions about the abolitionist project - and there are many, as I keep finding out - are not necessarily wrong, and they are certainly hotly debated, with considerable complexity and nuance. However, what is often overlooked is that abolitionists are equally motivated in ‘building the future from the present, in all the ways we can’.

‍Abolition is concerned with building systems, processes and communities in which economic, social and environmental justice, as well as reciprocal care between individuals, communities and systems, can be experienced and enjoyed by everyone irrespective of imperialist categories of nationality and citizenship. When talking about a world without prisons, abolitionists are often accused of being ‘utopian’ or ‘anarchists’ - terms that to many imply disorder and a lack of achievable realism. 

Abolitionists counter these concerns by reminding us that it is the continuing belief in prisons that might be the real ‘utopia.’ Our emotional, cultural and financial investment in prison expansion continues despite evidence that prisons don’t work. After all, we know that across different geographical contexts, prisons displace rather than address structural problems, committed harms, and social conflicts.  It is therefore concerning to see that the Irish government plans to invest 500 million euros over the next 4 years to increase the capacity of the Irish prison estate by more than 1,500 prison spaces, which would increase the current bed capacity of 4,736 by a staggering 32%. The Irish Government’s prison expansion plan reflects a lack of critical imagination and ignorance of repeated calls to implement alternative de-carceral strategies.

The Inside-Out Classroom

Armed with some of this knowledge and, admittedly, a good bit of frustration, I was excited that ‘Transformative justice and penal abolition’ was on the syllabus for our Inside-Out classroom a few weeks ago. I have been facilitating these classes inside Cork prison with my colleague since 2019. The idea behind the Inside-Out classroom is that by bringing together university students (‘outside students’) and incarcerated persons (‘inside students’) in one classroom for a semester we can create new learning opportunities and connections.

Students - both on the inside and from the outside - regularly describe these classrooms as changing their perceptions of the ‘other,’ re-igniting their passion for learning, and giving them confidence to articulate their views on the topics covered. These include critical education for democracy; from crime to social harm; language, labelling and stigma; masculinities; and penal abolition.

Critical Pedagogy

After our usual icebreakers and discussion of assigned readings, we used Sarah Lamble’s brilliant examples of ‘practising everyday abolition.’ Through discussing concrete examples, students explore together what non-punitive and abolitionist solutions would look like for resolving neighbourhood conflict, classroom challenges in schools, consuming social media indiscriminately, or assigning housing to people convicted of sexual offences. Discussions were heated (although they always are in these classrooms) and partly very humorous - probably to dissipate very emotionally charged views on punishment and justice. But these tense dialogues also quickly revealed the flatness of our collective imaginaries (and I include my own in that, too!) of what abolition could really look like in our daily lives.

We realised that we find it difficult to imagine where else to turn for help in emergency situations, for example, except for calling the police. This is despite many of us acknowledging that we do not feel safe in doing so. We reflected on how we would always prioritise the safety of our own children and families when dealing with neighbourhood conflict. And, while there was consensus that convicted sex offenders should not be homeless, they should definitely be housed ‘elsewhere’ and not in our neighbourhoods.

Our discussions showed me that I need to learn how to scaffold abolitionist teaching in a better way, something that, amongst others, my colleague and our fellow IPAN member, Marina Bell has written about so well recently.

The Tour

At the end of the session, it so happened coincidentally that (the Outside) students received a tour of Cork prison. The prison is heavily overcrowded, with three to four men sharing a cell originally designed for single occupancy. On 13 March 2026 Cork prison had an overimprisonment rate of 140%. Needless to say, this has detrimental impacts on all aspects of incarcerated persons’ lives, from sleeping on mattresses, eating their food in proximity to the lidless toilet in the cell, prison education closures, restrictive out-of-cell time and lengthy waiting lists for health and psycho-social supports.

Outside students were also shocked by the lack of green spaces and the encompassing presence of concrete courtyards and walls where their inside classmates spend their days. Despite having visited this and other Irish prisons many times, I remain equally abhorred when seeing these environments. The stark prison environment in Cork Prison is particularly depressing, given that it only opened its doors in 2016. Its dystopian environment contradicts the ample evidence available of the impacts of our built environment on mental health and well-being. 

Earlier in our classroom, we had also discussed a recently released investigative TV programme on the lack of psychiatric care places in Ireland and the resulting confinement of patients in prisons without adequate care. Again, students were shocked to see some of these cells in the lower level of the prison, with little to no natural daylight and no visual (let alone physical) access to green spaces.

What was clearly visible here was how we use prisons to warehouse people with mental health needs, how prisons displace the failings of appropriate mental health services and ultimately how this lack of provision contributes to recurrent criminalisation and re-incarceration of vulnerable groups of people.

Abolitionist imaginations

I couldn’t help but leave the prison that day deflated and disillusioned. At the time of writing, Cork Prison is set to double its capacity, demolishing and rebuilding the old prison site adjacent to the ‘new’ prison. Notably, the plan is to also create spaces for 100 female prisoners in Cork for the first time since 1923.  There is no clear indication of how the needs for healing and restoration of imprisoned persons will be taken into consideration and how the growth in prison expansion will be matched with supportive measures. Although for abolitionists, the move towards ‘healthy’ and ‘green’ prisons is just as problematic as any other project of prison building and expansion, the lack of attention paid to the physical environments that we provide for prisoners is indicative of the low value we ascribe to them.

I think of prisons as infrastructures of punishment, which dehumanise the people we lock up in them. I wonder why we don’t prioritise infrastructures that support people to stay away from prison and from suffering more generally?

Coincidentally, in the same week, I came across an innovative psychiatric care project for young people in Potsdam, Germany.  The project meets urgently needed spaces for psychiatric support through ‘therapy boats’ for young people, which link therapeutic environments to nature. In the US, Deanna Van Buren’s architectural practice designs explicitly for decarceration, and in the Netherlands, there are housing co-operatives where refugees and students share living spaces with financial support from municipalities. These examples demonstrate how mutually beneficial solutions for different groups in need can find expression in physical and material infrastructures and environments, if we only start thinking more creatively and move beyond the status quo of how we have always done things.

These recent experiences have reminded me that I need to continuously reflect on and further develop my skills in talking to students and others about penal abolition. I want to focus on emphasising the world-building nature of abolitionism and offering concrete examples of alternatives to incarceration and punishment. I also want to learn how I can better explain in an Irish context the connections between the lack of investment in infrastructures, such as housing and psychiatric care, and the heavy investment in penal and carceral infrastructures. By doing so, I hope to broaden my own capacity and that of the people around me for abolitionist imagining.   

*Katharina Swirak is an…

IPAN member and senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at University College Cork. Some of her research interests include critical approaches to understanding reintegration after prison, the intersections of welfare policy and ‘criminal justice’ and emancipatory approaches to prison education.