Based on extended participant observation, this paper explores the beliefs and practices of Critical Resistance (CR), a leading organization in the prison abolition movement. In particular, it looks at one of CR's most notable features: the extensive amount of time it spends developing, elaborating, and deploying a theory of the "prison-industrial complex." In this paper, I argue that the centrality of theory in the prison abolition movement is the product of its position in a field of social justice activists. The elaboration of "abolitionist theory" enables the group to recoup positive benefits within the social justice field. At the same time, the focus on theory has negative consequences for the group's stated goal of building a mass-based movement of " those most affected" by the rise of the penal state.