Abolition in this philosophy is not just eliminating material structures of incarceration and punishment such as prisons and police; it is more deeply about shifting our relationships to land, to capitalism, to each other, and to ourselves. As Moten and Harney (2013) ask,

What is, so to speak, the object of abolition? Not so much the abolition of prisons but the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the founding of a new society. (42)

Abolition is also the shifting of knowledge hierarchies away from the idea that justice is the province of a few highly trained law experts and academics. Instead, we know the work of abolition lives in our communities every day, including our refusal to abandon or dehumanize those living inside its walls.

— Abolitionist Intimacies by El Jones (Page 81)