Abolition studies has a long and contested history in criminology. Although interest in abolitionism has grown substantially over the past decade, it remains relatively marginalised in the discipline. Abolitionist arguments are often treated as simplistic and reductive. However, in practice, navigating the politics of abolition is complex and requires close attention to specific cases and contexts. Abolition geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore provocatively contends that ‘abolition requires that we change one thing: everything’, yet how we pursue radically alternative approaches will differ according to the case, culture, and issue of focus.

This panel critically engages with contemporary challenges in abolition studies. In each of the papers, authors grapple with abolitionist issues where ‘the problem’ is not quite what it seems. Through close analysis of specific issues and cases, the authors highlight instances of carceral power unfolding in ways that are unexpected and inconsistent, and that do not fit with the conventional scripts of abolitionist campaigns and debates. The papers draw attention to some of the pitfalls of political shorthand that might sound persuasive, but risk diverting our attention from the deeper workings of carceral power at play. From confronting and reframing common rebukes of abolitionist ideas to contesting assumptions about carceral capacity building, the authors argue for new ways of thinking about the nature of abolitionism’s shifting targets.

This paper examines the relationship between prison expansion and the intensification of pre-emptive risk logics. In studies of punishment, much has been written on the ontological (or subjectification) effects of risk-based practices and how these govern penal interventions and resource distribution. While most would agree that risk mentalities are bound up with neoliberal carceral expansion, less is known about how risk logics shape carceral infrastructure projects.

I use the Western Plains Correctional Centre as a case study: a 1248-bed prison constructed on Wadawurrung country near Geelong, Australia, at a cost of AUD$1.1 billion (over £500 million). The prison was built ‘to meet expected demand’ from the government’s 2018 bail reforms, which severely restricted access to bail and fuelled the state’s ongoing remand crisis. However, Western Plains has been empty since it was completed in November 2022. When questioned, the Minister proclaimed the prison ‘an important part of futureproofing our corrections system’.

This case troubles the longstanding abolitionist argument that ‘if prison beds are built, they will be filled’. I argue that understanding how a new jail comes to ‘sit idle’ requires an analysis of how the risk logics of global supply chains meet and mesh with the risk logics of contemporary crime control. Valuing infrastructural flexibility in response to volatile and unpredictable ‘markets’, new prisons become viable as investments in carceral capacity, even when empty. Attending to prison expansion through the lens of critical logistics enables a deeper understanding of ‘risk’ as a flexible technology of carceral futurity. The state’s production and defence of carceral futures highlights the urgency of contesting and reconceptualising dominant risk logics—and connecting the fight against prisons to broader struggles against colonial racial capitalism.

This paper considers the problem of sexual exceptionalism as a significant obstacle to abolitionist politics. Despite a growing global interest in abolitionist politics, a persistent challenge arises with the question of 'what about the rapists?'. Individuals otherwise sympathetic to critiques of policing and imprisonment often make exceptions for gender and sexual violence, advocating for the necessity of policing, prisons, and punishment in these cases.

Underlying the 'what about the rapist' question are logics of 'sexual exceptionalism’ – a framing that treats sexual violence as fundamentally different from other harms and portrays individuals committing sexual harm as inherently distinct from ordinary people. This perspective approaches sexual violence as an issue of exceptional 'deviant others' rather than a pervasive problem deeply rooted in social norms and practices. Paradoxically, this 'othering' contributes to near impunity for sexual violence, as individuals who do not conform to the expected profile of a 'dangerous predator’ – particularly those protected by class, race, and sexual privilege – often evade accountability. Conversely, logics of sexual exceptionalism enable the targeting and demonisation of marginalised groups, particularly when invoking racial and class stereotypes of deviant and dangerous others.

This in turn means that disputes surrounding sexual violence often focus on adjudicating competing claims of risk, danger, innocence, and threat, diverting attention from addressing the structural conditions of sexual harm. To break free from this trap, this paper argues that the logics of sexual exceptionalism and its rationale for lingering carcerality must be confronted. The paper suggests that a politics of 'safety for all' must include both those who commit sexual violence as well as those who experience it. This approach necessitates moving beyond the divisive focus on determining who is deserving/undeserving of support and protection, and instead building a politics of collective safety for everyone.

This paper seeks to interrogate the ambiguous relationship between police practice and the law and its implications for those of us researching and campaigning against police racism, violence, and expansions of police power. The paper takes as its entry point the policing of serious violence – and especially knife crime – in England and Wales. In recent years, the Conservative government has sought to provide police with greater ordnance in the ‘fight’ against serious violence and knife crime, introducing new offences, police powers, and ‘hybrid’ or ‘behavioural control’ orders. Campaign groups, organisers, activists, and scholars alike have expressed wariness about the expansions of police power produced by these legal changes, with some commentators explicitly voicing concerns about the likelihood of these new offences, powers, and orders being exercised disproportionately against racially and economically marginalised people. Such concerns have often been expressed in the refrain: ‘if you give police more powers, they’ll use them’. However, while provocative, and containing a kernel of common-sense wisdom, this claim is not necessarily borne out by the research evidence. Indeed, pilots of two of the most permissive and invasive of these new powers, Knife Crime Prevention Orders (KCPOs) and Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs), are a case in point: the police’s practices in these pilots have been difficult to reconcile with predictions offered by some commentators (including the author of this paper) about the frequency and nature of interventions the orders would licence against members of the public. Adopting KCPOs and SVROs as case studies, this paper suggests that a more nuanced appreciation of when, why, and how legal changes affect police practice will better serve research and campaign work that is motivated to critique and challenge expansions of police power.