Why Abolition | The Returning Artists Guild

RAG supports abolition because we believe safe communities are built through care, connection, creativity, and meeting human needs—not punishment, incarceration, and systems of isolation.

RAG draws from the historical movement to abolish slavery to understand how harmful systems can be dismantled and replaced with structures that support justice, well-being, and collective freedom. We believe safer communities are built through relationships, mutual support, and opportunities for people to heal, contribute, and flourish.

Abolition is a framework for creating safety through care, connection, dignity, and accountability. It asks us to imagine and build systems that help people thrive by meeting human needs rather than relying on punishment, isolation, and incarceration.

What Abolition Means to Us

Accountability beyond punitive measures
Safety rooted in meeting human needs
Repair and restoration instead of cycles of punishment
Communities built through collaboration and mutual support
Building alternatives to the carceral system—not reforming it
Abolition asks us to imagine and build toward a future where everyone has what they need to thrive and contribute to the flourishing of others.

Why the Current System Fails

The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, imprisoning roughly 531–614 people per 100,000—far above the global median of approximately 140 per 100,000. Mass incarceration impacts millions of people directly and places enormous strain on families, neighborhoods, schools, and entire communities.

The carceral system responds to harm through punishment, isolation, and confinement—but punishment alone does not create safety. In many cases, incarceration creates additional harm by separating people from housing, healthcare, education, employment, and support systems.

At the same time, American culture has normalized and sensationalized punishment through political rhetoric, fear-based media, and entertainment. “Tough on crime” policies and the rise of mass incarceration reinforced the false idea that more prisons and policing automatically create safer communities.

We reject the idea that poverty, addiction, trauma, or systemic inequality can be solved through punishment. Poor people do not create the conditions of poverty. Black communities did not create racism and discrimination. Yet people living within these conditions are disproportionately criminalized and punished for systemic failures they did not create.

The Legacy of the 13th Amendment

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery “except as punishment for crime.” That exception created a legal pathway for forced labor and racialized incarceration to continue after slavery formally ended. Many abolitionists and scholars point to this history as a foundational link between slavery, mass incarceration, and the modern prison system.

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What Actually Creates Safety

Safety Is Built Through Relationships, Stability, and Support

Currently and formerly incarcerated people are often survivors of violence, instability, poverty, and systemic harm themselves. Like all people, they want safe communities, meaningful relationships, and opportunities to contribute their labor, creativity, and care to the places they inhabit.

Research consistently shows that stable housing, healthcare, education, employment opportunities, and strong community support reduce harm and improve reentry outcomes. When people have their basic needs met and are connected to systems of support, communities become safer.

RAG works to build those systems of support through creative practice, relationship-building, and long-term community connection during incarceration, reentry, and beyond.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Access to creative opportunity, resources, and mentorship
Long-term support for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated creatives
Professional and community safety nets
Collaboration over isolation
Accountability grounded in repair and restoration rather than punishment alone
A safer society is created by investing in the conditions that help people survive, heal, and thrive.

5% / 25% The U.S. has 5% of the world's population but 25% of its incarcerated people. Source: Equal Justice Initiative

50,000+ Laws and regulations can affect employment, housing, education, and civic participation after incarceration. Source: ACLU Smart Justice

75% Of people released from prison are rearrested within five years. Source: BYU Ballard Brief: Mass Incarceration in the United States

The Role of Lived Experience

The RAG centers the lived experience and leadership of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated creatives through a peer-led model grounded in creative practice, mutual support, and connection.

Because incarceration intersects with issues of race, poverty, disability, gender, sexuality, and systemic inequality, our creative community brings a wide range of lived perspectives to the work. This is why RAG is a peer-led organization: we believe people closest to systemic harm should help shape the systems, relationships, and creative communities that support healing and collective freedom.

Creativity as a Lifeline

Creative practice is essential to health, healing, and human connection. For many incarcerated and formerly incarcerated creatives, it is also a lifeline—offering meaning, expression, community, and possibility during confinement, reentry, and beyond.

We intentionally focus on creative practice, rather than traditional artistic mediums because many people impacted by incarceration have been denied the time, resources, support, or confidence to see themselves as artists—even when they are actively creating. Like all creatives, they need more than talent to thrive: they need stability, support, opportunity, and time to develop their work and themselves as people.

RAG centers these voices because the survivors of incarceration should help shape the future beyond it. Our work meets immediate needs while also building toward a freer and more humane society.

What We Don’t Do

The RAG is not a prison reform organization, and we do not contract with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC), departments of correction, or other agencies responsible for incarceration, surveillance, punishment, or enforcement. We also do not accept corrections funding or funding structures that require us to operate as an extension of these systems.

This does not prevent us from serving incarcerated artists, entering correctional facilities to provide programming, or collaborating with universities and other outside organizations working inside prisons.

Our independence allows us to remain accountable first to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated creatives—not to correctional institutions. It allows us to build authentic relationships, respond directly to community needs, and compensate people fairly for their work and contributions.