On Abolition: Education Policy, Activism, and Police-Free Learning Environments

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Following decades of organizing for police-free schools, the surge of protests against police violence during the summer of 2020 led school districts and postsecondary institutions to reduce funding, disarm, and terminate contracts with police departments. Situated in this policy context, this panel explores the movement toward police abolition in K12 schools and higher education by considering the struggle for police-free learning environments as well as the social, political, and financial impacts of divesting from policing. Reflecting the annual meeting theme of research that “matters” for social and racial justice, papers in this session draw from multiple vantage points to explore the liberatory possibilities for racial justice that emerge when policy – and youth – disrupt connections between education and criminal justice.

Sub Unit

• Division L - Educational Policies and Politics / Division L - Section 7: Social Context and Structural Inequalities

Chair

• DeMarcus A Jenkins, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Youth Abolition 101 - Essence-Jade Gatheright; Jacqulyn Hamilton, Chicago Freedom School

• Disrupting Carceral Spaces Through PhotoVoice With Black Youth - DeMarcus A Jenkins, University of Pennsylvania

• #We Came to Learn: Envisioning Abolitionist Educational Futures in Washington, D.C. - Kristin Sinclair, Georgetown University; Courtney A Douglass, University of Maryland; Sophia Rodriguez, University of Maryland

• Reimagining Campus Safety: Abolitionist Possibilities and Police-Free Futures - Charles H.F. Davis, University of Michigan

• A Multicase Examination of District Strategies to Reallocate School Police Dollars - Taylor Enoch-Stevens, University of Arizona

Discussant

• Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts - Boston