We have to face the facts: the services prisons are supposed to provide will never compensate for the harm they cause. Since the 1960s, this realization of an appalling mess has led activists and intellectuals to work towards penal abolitionism: an end to all prisons, but also to all the other institutions that make up the penal system, such as the police and the courts. This is the story that Brick by Brick, Wall by Wall intends to tell.

Drawing on transnational trajectories of struggles and political movements that have put the critique of prison and justice systems at the heart of their approach, this book offers an indispensable source of inspiration for contemporary movements.