On the Question of Abolition: Prisons and Schools in the United States

• In Event: Abolitionist Methodologies

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, there has been a rich literature base that has added nuance and complexity to the analysis of the relationship between schools and prisons in the United States. Erica Meiners (2007), Maisha Winn (2011), Kathleen Nolan (2011), Connie Wun (2014) and Sabina Vaught (2017) to name just a few have imbued the field with a complexity that accounts for the raced, classed, gendered and sexed dynamics that are at the intersection of schools and prisons in the United States. Many of the critical works within the aforementioned burgeoning field are indebted to a particular analytical framework that is governed by the logics of abolition. Arising from the prison abolition movement, the authors are informed by a set of politics that seeks to address the concerns raised by the prison abolition movement and apply them to the context of education. Within the abolition framework, there is an understanding that the connections between schools and prisons are multifaceted and quite intimate and as a result many of the strategies/analysis/models that have been successful within the de-carceral movement in the United States are apropos within the field of education.

The aim of my paper is to further the provocations that have been of immense concern and have pushed the conversation of prison abolition and apply them to the relationship between schools and prisons. Given that the conversation pertaining to the relationship between the abolition framework and schools and prisons is in its early stages, my goal is to utilize foundational work of the prison abolition movement, namely Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s Golden Gulag and Beth Richie’s Arrested Justice, as models to develop a platform that demands a rigorous and thorough reckoning of the relationship between schools and prisons. With a particular focus on California, the paper seeks to lay out the specific methodologies that are needed to fully flush out both the particular convergences and importantly, where the prison abolition model diverges from school and prison analytic.

Focused on race, gender, class, sexuality with a particular appeal to political economy and region (i.e. California), the paper seeks to bring forth critical questions that are needed to begin a more thorough scholarly pursuit of an abolition framework with respect to prisons and education. With an eye to theory and practice, a major goal of the paper is to engage in the multiplicity of methods from practitioners, activists and scholars that have been effective in the development of a more just and humane educative landscape.

Author

• Damien Sojoyner, Claremont University - Scripps College