Mission

Interrupting Criminalization aims to interrupt and end the growing criminalization and incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color for criminalized acts related to public order, poverty, child welfare, drug use, survival, and self-defense.

Purpose

Interrupting Criminalization (IC) combines participatory research, data analysis, and systemic advocacy toward local campaigns and grassroots organizing efforts. The organization focuses on three key areas:

1. Criminalization of Daily Survival: IC disseminates information on the policing and prosecutorial practices that enable the criminalization of acts related to poverty, survival, drug use, mental health, child welfare, and self-defense, among other acts that drive the growing incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color.

2. Survivors of Violence: IC generates new research and analysis on policing and prosecutorial practices that drive the criminalization and incarceration of survivors of violence, particularly those who are charged with violent crimes carried out in defense of their lives.

3. Alternatives to Policing and Incarceration: In collaboration with organizations working across the country, IC develops comprehensive cross-sector strategies to end the criminalization, incarceration, and deportation of women, trans and gender non-conforming people. Focusing on the “6 Ds” (Document, Decriminalize, Divert, Decarcerate, Divest & Dismantle and Dream), IC’s work addresses the failure to attend to the drivers of women’s incarceration that have hampered the overall impact of movements to end mass incarceration.