CRIMINALIZATION OF SURVIVAL

CRIMINALIZATION OF SURVIVAL

Adding to the trauma of patriarchal violence is the experience of being criminalized explicitly for the strategies that bring people safety, security, healing, and self-determination — or even for just existing in the world.

For some people — especially Black people, queer and trans, non-US citizens, young people, people with mental illness, disabled people, neurodivergent people, people who use drugs, people living outside, people living with HIV— the criminalization of survival exists as a method for social control and makes them more vulnerable not only to imprisonment, but also to poor health outcomes, abuse, and exploitation. People with these identities and life experiences are also those who have been historically excluded from public health discourse, stigmatized, exploited by public health research, practice, and institutions.
 
The following selected resources provide insight into criminalized survival practices with the hopes of illuminating the need for alternatives to carceral solutions for people whose survival is criminalized.

Selected Resources

“No Choice but to Do It”: Why Women Go to Prison 
We Deserve Safety: Ending Criminalization of Women and Girls of Color 
Criminalizing Survival Curricula from Survived and Punished 
A Legacy of Injustice: U.S. Criminalization of Migration 
The Penrose Effect and the Acceleration of the War on Drugs 
Critical Resistance: Uncoupling Health and Mental Health Care from Policing and Prisons 
The School to Prison Pipeline, Explained 
Criminalization of Homelessness 
Mental Health First

Discussion Questions

What biases does my institution hold against people with criminalized identities including people living with mental illness, people who use drugs, people who live outside, and people living with HIV? 
How can my institution work to reframe our approaches to shift blame from survivors of the criminal legal system and create genuinely supportive structures? 
Who will provide the biggest barrier in implementing these new approaches, and what resources do they need to understand the shift in organizational culture? 
How has your institution encouraged a public health response to these experiences instead of a criminal legal response? What would it look like to have a truly public health and community-centered support of survival practices? 
How can we institutionalize efforts to reject initiatives that further stigmatize and criminalize communities who are already disproportionately policed?

Who To Follow

Survived and Punished @survivepunish 
Project Nia @projectnia 
Positive Women’s Network @PositiveWN 
Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS) @safespacesdc 
Mad in America @Mad_In_America 
Fireweed Collective 
Chase Strangio @chasestrangio 
California Coalition of Women Prisoners @c_c_w_p 
TGI Justice Project @tgijp 
Detention Watch @DetentionWatch 
Subini Annama @DrSubini 
LA CAN @LACANetwork 
Services not Sweeps @nosweepsla

For Further Learning

5 Pillars of Civil Rights for the Homeless 
Oakland: School District to Expand Restorative Justice Programs to all 86 Schools 
Mad World: Psychiatry, Abolition, and New Horizons 
Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex by Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith 
The Criminalization of Homelessness Explained

TAKE ACTION

Find out where your city and state fall on criminalizing people experiencing homelessness, people living with HIV, sex work, and people who use drugs and advocate for alternatives to incarceration for people with these criminalized identities.

Identify ways in which you and your colleagues can advocate for people’s autonomy and increase the quality of life for people who engage in criminalized survival practices. How can you utilize your institutional power to support community led initiatives for safer outdoor spaces and drug decriminalization initiatives?

Donate to bail funds, like the Black Mamas Bailout.