Holding Kids Captive and Imprisoning Education: Abolitionist Research on Youth Incarceration and Carceral Schooling

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium gathers seven educational scholars who examine the state of education within juvenile probation camps in LA County. We offer research on the raced, classed and gendered schooling experiences of incarcerated youth, as well as the educators who developed pedagogies, curricula, and structures designed to provide opportunities for progressing socially and academically under conditions of confinement. While arguably developing one of the most innovative models in the U.S., the researchers examine how racial capitalist, settler colonial, and cisheteropatriarchal logics continue to drive priorities and structure carceral schooling in ways that undermine any possibilities for educational justice. We interrogate the societal transformations and education needed to abolish the juvenile justice system and build futures where youth prisons are unimaginable.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Educators for Social Justice

Chair

• Pedro A. Noguera, University of Southern California

Papers

• Examining the Racial Settler Capitalist Politics of Trauma-Informed Care With Incarcerated Black and Latinx Girls - Casey Philip Wong, University of California - Los Angeles; Jamelia Nicole Harris, University of California - Los Angeles

• No Longer Locking Up Their Own: Reconceptualizing Juvenile Probation Officers in the Era of #DefundThePolice - Julio Ángel Alicea, Rutgers University - Camden

• Guilty by Association: How Gendered Learning Interferes With Constructions of Innocence and Educational Liberation - Sam Blanchard, University of California - Los Angeles

• Examining the Relation Between Critical Pedagogy and Youth Incarceration - Conor Sasner, First Focus on Children

• Carcerality and the Classroom: Teachers Role in the Criminalization of Incarcerated Youth - Annie Le, Stanford University

Discussant

• Maisha T. Winn, University of California - Davis