“When Derecka Purnell was growing up, the police were a familiar presence in her life. Years later, the lawyer, activist, and author realized that her vision of a just society was radically different from the world in which she’d been socialized — and it didn’t include police at all.

In her new book, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom, Derecka talks about the events that shaped her position — and how she went from a skeptic of the abolitionist movement to one of its most vocal champions.”

Original article posted on NPR https://www.npr.org/2021/11/30/1060069264/imagining-a-world-without-prisons-or-police.