Edited by Ronica Mukerjee and Carlos Martinez
North Atlantic Books
4/15/2025, paperback
SKU: 9798889841401
A multi-discipline, multimedia guide to abolition through the lens of healthcare and medicine - featuring writings and artwork from 10+ incarcerated and post-detention activists
Exposing how marginalized communities are vilified by "carceral safety" systems, educators and health justice advocates Carlos Martinez and Ronica Mukerjee call for a radical break with reformist strategies in favor of ones grounded in grassroots organizing and abolition
Prisons, border security, and police forces are meant to protect. Yet for the most vulnerable, they more often cause harm. Funded in response to a never ending "crime wave," people with disabilities, Black and brown people, trans and queer people, people with mental health diagnoses, and survivors of trauma and abuse are targeted by punitive carceral policies. These policies perpetuate physical, psychological, and intergenerational harm. And they don't keep anyone safe.
All This Safety is Killing Us reflects this view, combining political strategy with evidence-based medical and social science research to envision a post-carceral society.
With contributions from scholars, activists and artists, All This Safety is Killing Us marks a radical break from punitive frameworks. Special features include:
- Contributions from nurses, doctors, doulas, public health workers, physical therapists, acupuncturists, and disability justice workers.
- Woodcuts, comics, mini-zines, infographics, and drawings by community activists, queer and trans/gender expansive-focused writers, current prisoners, deportees, and survivors of state-sanctioned violence.
- Interviews with leading abolition and health justice scholars.
Bringing scholarly research into public conversation, this book shows that those working within public health and medical fields have a critical role to play in creating a truly safe and flourishing society.
Reviews:
"A stark first-hand look at the ways policing and carcerality negatively impact health care delivery and patient well-being, and evidence-based steps we can take to create safer and healthier medical settings. This book should be required reading for everyone working in health-care settings." --Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing
"These pages evidence a rapidly emerging revolt against an existing order that deputizes caretaking professionals as state-ordained partners in the gendered anti-Black, colonial carceral warfare of hospitals, prisons, detention centers, clinics, and psychiatric/behavioral confinement." --Dylan Rodriguez, distinguished professor at UC Riverside and author of White Reconstruction
"Case studies and analyses offer concrete examples of the tactics and tools health care practitioners and organizers are already using to dismantle systems of carceral safety and replace them with abolition medicine. I hope this book becomes required reading for all health workers." --A. Naomi Paik, author of Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary
About the Editors:
Ronica Mukerjee DNP, MsA, AAHIVS is a family and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and acupuncturist. Mukerjee is an assistant professor at Columbia University and has a private practice providing hormonal and psychiatric care for trans and gender-diverse patients. Mukerjee focuses include border, police, and prison abolition as well as racial, economic, and healthcare justice for people with substance use disorders and LGBTQIA+ people living with HIV in refugee and migrant communities.
Carlos Martinez, MPH, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies and faculty of the Global and Community Health program at UC, Santa Cruz. Martinez's research examines the health consequences and sociocultural implications of migrant policing, deportation, our fractured asylum system, environmental injustice, and the global War on Drugs. His research and advocacy are aimed at promoting health and social justice among migrants, asylum seekers, deportees, substance users, and other marginalized groups.