Resisting Positivist Framing of Incarcerated Youth: Making Sense of QuantCrit and Abolition

• In Event: Abolitionist Experiments in Research: Enacting an Abolitionist Praxis in a National Study in Youth Prisons

Abstract

Objectives: Quantitative research has largely relied on positivist notions of numbers and statistics. Davis (2011) notes that centering the voices of incarcerated people “is not so much to secure change once and for all, but rather to create new terrains for struggle” (p. 16). In this paper, we argue for an alternative approach to quantitative work to embody abolition.
Theoretical framework: We integrated Quantitative Critical Race Theory (QuantCrit; Gillborn, Warmington, and Demack, 2018) with DisCrit to recognize: (1) race and ability, as interdependent social constructs, are not readily amenable to quantification, necessitating a critical perspective to avoid reproduction; (2) numbers are not neutral and have often been used to legitimate racism and ableism; (3) categories are not “obvious” and should be interpreted through intersectionality; (4) numbers cannot “speak for themselves,” and critical analyses should center the lived experiences of marginalized communities who have historically been ignored; and (5) numbers, although not inherently more robust than qualitative data, can and should be used to advance social justice.
Modes of Inquiry: We describe how we operationalized each tenet to inform our methods. Tenet 1 - Overall Goal: Positivist quantitative methods encourage parsing complex social phenomena into discrete variables that can be individually measured and manipulated, an artificial endeavor that warps the fluid reality of how racism and ableism operate. Our goal was to reject this reductive process and instead intentionally design for complexity to honor the dynamic realities of incarcerated youth. Tenet 2 - Survey Design: Quantitative methods have historically positioned marginalized communities as objects of research, rather than valuable collaborators. We resisted this deficit notion by partnering with formerly incarcerated youth to build our survey, seeking to develop questions that are designed for—and by—the community. Tenet 3 - Analysis: Traditional quantitative analysis typically attempts to “control” for the impact of specific variables (e.g., race OR socioeconomic status OR sex, etc.) on certain outcomes (e.g., suspension, expulsion, incarceration) with results deemed as more important based on statistical labels of “significance.” We subverted this normative approach by instead carrying out analyses that align with an intersectional framing (e.g., logistic regression), highlighting specific findings as important based on lived experience. Tenet 4 - Reporting Results: Quantitative studies usually report results through static tables and isolated numbers, emphasizing aggregate findings at the “population” level—individuals are rarely focused on. To honor the specific stories of incarcerated youth, we reported findings through multiple formats, including qualitative profiles of specific youth. Tenet 5 - Ultimate Purpose: We recognize that quantitative methods have been used to perpetuate oppression through deficit frameworks. We designed our methods to harness the utility of numerical data while rejecting the positivist legacy of traditional quantitative methodology to enact our abolitionist commitment to resistance.
Significance: Carrying out abolitionist praxis through quantitative methods is not always clear. We believe that working through these methodological challenges can be done to amplify the voices of incarcerated youth. This abolitionist experiment in methodology was one where we fought for more just futures by “creating new terrains for struggle” (Davis, 2011).

Author

• Candice Jeehae Kim, Stanford University