What is Abolition Apostles?
Abolition Apostles is a national jail and prison ministry based in New Orleans, Louisiana – the most incarcerated place in the world. Founded in 2019 by Pastors David Brazil and Sarah Pritchard, we now serve over two thousand incarcerated people in over thirty states with the help of hundreds of volunteers across the country.
Our mission is to offer moral and spiritual support to members of the incarcerated community, and contribute to the destruction of the prison-industrial complex through solidarity, prophetic witness, and community organizing inside and outside of prison. We are a Christian ministry, but it is not necessary to be a Christian in order to participate. Our approach to solidarity is fivefold:
We begin with pen-pal letter-writing, to establish connections and offer moral support.
Where appropriate, we continue with material support, which can include adding money to commissary, searching for needed resources on the internet, etc.
We arrange visitation for volunteers to visit facilities.
We engage in advocacy on behalf of our pen pals by writing letters to parole boards and other decision-makers and also by participating in local abolitionist organizing to struggle against the prison industrial complex in our cities and regions.
We offer support for re-entry through our RESET (Re-entry Support Experience Teams) program.
Abolition Apostles is an explicitly anti-capitalist ministry which stands in solidarity with the movement for Black liberation. We view prison abolition as inseparable from the struggles for Black self-determination and freedom from state violence and criminalization. This ministry is entirely volunteer-run and donation-based. We hope you will consider joining our work in solidarity with incarcerated people.
Join us!
The Abolition Apostles newsletter will bring you monthly reflections on what it means to do abolition today, plus plenty of opportunities to get involved by becoming a pen pal, joining a working group, attending a political education session, or … !
Like everything we do, the Abolition Apostles newsletter will always be free.
If you like what we do and want to support our work, consider becoming a sustainer with a monthly contribution here. All donations made through the Abolition Apostles Patreon go directly to support the expenses of the ministry, including maintaining regional PO boxes to receive mail from incarcerated people, donations to our incarcerated pen pals’ commissary accounts, and maintaining our free national hotline for incarcerated people.
