Abolition by the Numbers: Mathematics as a Tool to Dismantle the Carceral State (and Build Alternatives)

• In Event: Transforming Justice Through Teaching and Learning for the Public Good

Abstract

In this paper, the authors explore mathematics as an agent of the carceral state and imagine mathematics education practices may stop the state from harming—and killing—Black, Brown, queer, migrant, poor, and other marginalized people. We also consider how mathematics could be a core tool for an abolitionist movement. What can we do to change the practices of mathematics education and incarceration that disqualify the bodies and knowledges of those marked as most marginal in our communities? The distinct but parallel paths and patterns of being locked out of access to mathematics and being targeted for control and capture tether marginalized groups to cycles of harm and premature death linked directly to “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability” (Gilmore, 2007, p. 28).
Most analyses of the school-prison nexus (Author) engage policy or structural aspects of schooling. Those that consider the relationship between the school or classroom and the school-prison nexus usually do so in discussions of school discipline (e.g., Morris, 2016). But content is seldom addressed in these discussions. Here, we consider mathematics’ role in the school-prison nexus. We offer 3 connections between mathematics, harm, and incarceration/freedom: (a) the link between incarceration and algebra; (b) the role mathematics plays in ordering the world and reifying social hierarchies; and (c) the use of numbers as a means to facilitate social death.
With the conviction that the school-prison nexus needs elimination, not reform, abolition advocates use the tools of political education, awareness building, policy work, and cultural change (e.g., Author). An old struggle gaining renewed interest, abolition is a key focus of contemporary justice organizations such as Dream Defenders and Black Youth Project. Abolitionists pursue nonreformist reforms designed to liberate people, delegitimize the carceral regime, and make material differences in stakeholders’ lives, in order to “unravel rather than widen the net of social control through criminalization” (Gilmore, 2007, p. 242). Rather than build more prisons in response to overcrowded prisons, abolitionists would reevaluate and change laws and policies that have created the world’s largest prison population.
Labaree (2010) describes education reform as the response to crisis conditions. Since the 1980s, reform has been the heartbeat of mathematics education, and national narratives framed a crisis around pending threats to national security and global economic power (e.g., Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century, 2007). Mathematics education has also been framed as a Black/White achievement gap fetish (Gutiérrez, 2008). Instead of the stated aim of more inclusive and equitable mathematics education, reforms come “at the expense of the needs and interests of Black learners” (Berry et al., 2014, p. 541). Evidence of harm to non-White learners shows how mathematics education reforms have widened and strengthened the net of social control (Martin, 2015). Abolitionists (re)imagine mathematics education by starting with a different understanding of the crisis. In this paper, we explore different ways to think about crisis and how mathematics can be used to both interrogate and to contribute to the resolution of social crises.

Authors

• Erika C. Bullock

• Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University