Responding to and Dismantling Carceral Systems: Learning from Experiential Knowledge, Organizing and Community

T he intersection of homelessness and criminalization is a critical point to understand and act on injustice.I am grateful for the collection of works presented in this issue -each off ering thoughtful and nuanced calls for urgent action.Each contribution embodies an essential perspective on systems of criminalization, highlighting the simultaneous invisibility, hyper-surveillance, disconnection, and violence that individuals are burdened with (Sylvestre & Bellot, 2014) as they try to survive carceral systems with deep roots in ideologies of colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy (Chartrand & Rougier, 2022).The authors draw from experience, practice, theory, and organizing to highlight the need to build new systems of care, providing important reminders that harm, surveillance, and punishment do not only happen within prisons or at singular moments in individuals' lives.Each author echoes broader moves in literature on homelessness and punishment -highlighting punitive measures in social systems outside of prisons (education, housing supports, social assistance, etc.) to show how disproportionate punishment, precarity, and surveillance is an intergenerational and life-long experience for many (Nichols & Malenfant, 2023;Nichols et al., 2023).They highlight an important strategy for survival in the face of institutions grounded in capitalist, neoliberal, white supremacist, colonial value systems: community.Peers, community members, family, loved ones, and even strangers, as mentioned throughout this issue, may make up integral supports in the face of "the systems that battle us" (Dreddz & Jackson, 2024, p. 34) -systems that both fail to serve and actively harm.Carceral systems, as demonstrated by the authors here, are anything but neutral.They are deeply normed to punish certain individuals and groups, creating and perpetuating cycles of homelessness and blame.This edition demonstrates that the cycle of homelessness and punishment is a systemic failure across the globe.Current responses internationally refl ect a neoliberal individualization of behaviours that are deemed criminal (Blondeau, 2023), as well as individual blame for both "bad" behaviour and homelessness.The lie of individual fault for homelessness and criminalization may