Brick by Brick

How We Build a World Without Prisons

Cradle Community

A vital community resource for those who dream of building a just, caring, prison-free society.

Second edition: 8 July 2023
Paperback / 9781914221286
ebook / 9781914221293
240 pages

First edition: 25 November 2021
Paperback / 9781914221033
ebook / 9781914221095
216 pages

Buy this book (paperback)

Buy this book (ebook)

‘A starting point for anyone interested in learning more about abolition.’
— gal-dem

‘Brick by Brick is devoted to dismantling and rebuilding … Cradle advocate a revolutionary, compassionate communalism: “We must commit to care by any and all means necessary.”’
— The New Statesman

The fight for prison abolition is a struggle for collective liberation: a transformative vision of a safer world, in which communities live free from exploitation on a thriving planet.

Drawing connections across social justice movements with a shared abolitionist ethic, this revolutionary book illuminates how harmful ideas of criminality and punishment can manifest in many ways beyond the prison industrial complex. This work is a collaboration with friends, mentors and giants fighting for housing justice, food justice, climate justice, migrant justice, justice for survivors of violence, and more.

With this insightful and generous book, now in its second edition, Cradle Community invites us to explore what it will take to dismantle structures of oppression, and to imagine the future we can rebuild together—brick by brick.

Cradle Community is a collective of organisers committed to radical education and building understanding of prison abolition and transformative justice. Brick by Brick is their first book.

Listen along to the Brick by Brick playlist, curated by Cradle Community.

‘Dismantling the carceral state ... means building a better society ... where migrants are not criminalised, where there is food and housing justice and where healthcare and education are decolonised. … [An] important contribution[] to the conversation on the steps needed to begin the journey [to abolition].’
— Labour Hub

‘A warm invitation … When Cradle write, they are speaking to you and me about our responsibilities to one another and to building a world that is life-affirming.’
— Lola Olufemi, author of Experiments in Imagining Otherwise

‘An unflinching account of everyday injustices … an unmissable call to care, to imagine and to build the world we need.’
— Joshua Virasami, author of How to Change It

‘Cradle shows us that abolition is—irresistibly!—a doing word. This is the work: lives lived in collective social practice … wayfinding, toward a new and abundant world.’
— Imani Robinson, writer and curator

‘Brilliant and necessary … embodies the joy, radical optimism, uncertainty, care-fullness and urgency of abolition!’
— Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, author of Postcolonial Banter

‘Highlighting the power of care, imagination and resistance in our movements, this book is absolutely indispensable. Read it, now!’
— Luke de Noronha, author of Deporting Black Britons

‘The book that UK abolitionists have been waiting for—collaborative, accessible, pragmatic, community-centred and clear-sighted … [an] irresistible invitation to dismantle, to resist and to build a world in which no one is left out.’
— Zahra Bei, No More Exclusions

‘A much-needed resource … Accessible, thorough and urgent—a must-read!’
— Travis Alabanza, writer, performer and theatre maker

‘It is so vital to have a book that focuses on carceral structures here in the UK, and keeps an abolitionist focus firmly on prisons, their ideological support, and what to do about it.’
— Sami Çapulcu, Act Build Change blog

‘A germinal handbook for those in the UK and beyond, Brick by Brick offers fierce tools, maps and provocations for our collective liberation … Study, discuss and engage!’
— Erica R. Meiners, co-author of The Feminist and the Sex Offender and Flaunt It!

Press

PODCAST: On Prisons, Borders and Abolition

— Pages of Hackney, 20 March 2023

REVIEW: Brick by Brick by Cradle Community

— Smiths Magazine, 22 July 2022

Yara Rodrigues Fowler: ‘Revolution – that’s what I’m hungry for’

— The Guardian, 23 April 2022

REVIEW: Reviewed in short

— The New Statesman, 26 January 2022

REVIEW: Arguments for abolition

— Labour Hub, 19 January 2022

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