Community development non-profit Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS) has published a vision designed around the idea of "unbuilding racism" in light of the growing movement to abolish police and prisons that has garnered national attention in the wake of the anti-racism and policy brutality protests that are currently griping the United States. 

Writing in a Medium post, the group, which is led by Deanna Van Buren, explains that they are "grieving for the intolerable and constant deaths of black and brown people at the hands of the police, and all the other lives lost through the impacts of mass incarceration," adding, "This is why we are prison abolitionists."

Speaking to competing demands between criminal justice "reform" and prison "abolition," DJDS writes, "We are not content to repair some windows or simply 'improve' what we had before. What we had before and have today is an architecture of oppression, built on the backs of slaves and the bodies of prisoners."

"Now we are in a moment of protest and listening. What we will need is an architecture of liberation. Communities must plan and design new systems of justice, and all levels of government must stop building structures that oppress us and start working with us," the group adds.

DJDS presents a three point plan initiating this transition that focuses of dismantling and reimagining how justice is carried out in the United States. 

The first point focuses on divestment from policing and prisons and investment in community enriching initiatives. "As everyone now understands, thanks to COVID-19 and #BlackLivesMatter, public safety is not the police; public safety is healthcare, jobs, education, housing, and social cohesion within all our communities," the group states.

Next, DJDS seeks to "ignite radical imagination," by explaining that "Nobody yet knows what the architecture of liberation will look like. Black and brown communities are speaking out now, and we must recognize that they (we) are the only experts that can identify the goals to aim for in rebuilding and restoring communities."

Lastly, the team, which pursues a collection of alternative rehabilitation and recovery initiatives through its day-to-day work, advocates for closing jails. 

"Prisons and jails are the built environment’s knee on the necks of our most systematically marginalized brothers and sisters," DJDS writes, "Now is the time to close these buildings and liberate our cities and rural communities. Tens of thousands of men and women are already being released from our prisons and jails in response to the pandemic. They and their families need places that offer healing, job training, short-term shelter, and other resources. We are working with community partners in the City of Atlanta to transform an oppressive jail into a Center for Equity — a hub for building social and economic equity in the black community. Every jail across the United States should be transformed into a Center for Equity."