What We Do

Our Mission Statement

Futures Beyond Criminalization is an up-and-coming organization in Minneapolis dedicated to collaborating with marginalized communities to make accessible resources, education, and creative power for public safety and justice outside of the state. We believe that the existing structures of criminal justice and policing not only fail at mitigating harm in our communities, but in fact terrorize vulnerable communities and “enforce existing relations of power and property” (Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie). We are guided by the principles of harm reduction, collective organizing, and the ongoing struggle against racism, social inequality, settler colonialism, and carceral control.

We are inspired by the brilliant activists and advocates whose ideas, activism and scholarship have laid the groundwork for the present-day abolitionist movement. This includes the work of past and present organizers in Minneapolis including AIM Patrol, MPD 150, REP, Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, Communities Beyond Police Brutality, and countless others. 

Futures Beyond Criminalization believes that a better world is possible. We hope that our work can facilitate a culture of healing, accountability, safety and empowerment within our communities. We identify the following as our core priorities, recognizing that they may ebb and flow with the changing needs of the community: 

  • Radical Transformation

  • Agency

  • Accessibility

  • Education

  • Harm Reduction

What We’ve Done

Futures Beyond Criminalization has hosted two successful community safety events. Our work thus far has been in the Little Earth, a community that has historically experienced the least protection and most harm from the Minneapolis Police Department. We identified the following as our key goals of our first two events: 

  • Build relationships through abolitionist and decolonial principles of trust, accountability, and reciprocity

  • Gain insight into community opinion on safety, justice, and policing

  • Hold space to co-create and imagine alternative futures of safety and justice

  • Use abolitionist pedagogy to raise consciousness on current opportunities for liberation 

In November 2022, we hosted our first event called “Community Listening Session: Tamales! Bingo! Super Smash Bros! Community Safety!” The primary purpose of this event was to facilitate relationship building with members of the Little Earth neighborhood, providing free food and fun activities to spend quality time with neighbors. The secondary was to gauge the needs and wants regarding public safety, future workshops and events, and alternatives to policing.

We asked: What should accountability look like when somebody causes harm in your community? Does the current criminal justice and policing system do this? If not, what would you change?

  • “Accountability in the form of restorative justice - victim centered.“

  • “Police need mental health training for mental health training for de-escalation”

  • “Disestablish the MPD.”

We asked: Your neighborhood community just got $100 million for improving public safety and accountability – how would you spend it? 

  • “Basic utilities and social services: make sure everybody is able to live a comfortable and healthy life”

  • “Funding for the arts”

  • “Tutoring/ GED help locally”

In January 2022, we hosted our second event, “Know Your Rights: Drugs & Overdosing” based on input gathered from the first event. We provided a rights training specific to drugs and overdosing from the Legal Rights Center and a Narcan Training provided by South Side Harm Reduction. 

What We Hope To Do

In the next year, we hope to continue providing events in the Minneapolis community (continuing our focus in Little Earth) on harm reduction, know your rights training, and abolitionist-focused community safety workshops. At these events, we commit to distributing resources for attendees, including but not limited to: Narcan, safe use supplies, COVID tests and masks, and informational handouts. We also provide free, healthy and hot food and free childcare at every event. We hope to expand our resource distribution capacity based on expressed community needs. 

We also hope to work in coalition with other projects working toward similar goals to support local initiatives for public safety outside of policing and the carceral system. 

We recognize that as local needs shift, so will our focus, so that we can best act in solidarity with our community members, particularly those who are most vulnerable and least heard by current institutions of power.