Abolition Dissonance: How Carcerality in Schools Persists in the Anti-Carceral Movement (Poster 6)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Friday 11:45am
  In Invited Poster Session: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research Poster Session

Abstract

In light of the growing movement to address policing and discipline in schools, this study grapples with how carcerality can still emerge in police-free environments. I used over 450 hours of participant observations and 30 in-depth interviews at a 6-12 grade school with a restorative justice focus in South Central Los Angeles to ask: How do anti-Black carcerality and racial punishment persist in the absence of school police and decline of traditional forms of school discipline? I find that in the absence of tactics like everyday police presence and high rates of suspensions and implementation of restorative justice programs, the school allows carcerality to exist through the physical containment and disposability of Black students. I term this phenomenon abolition dissonance.

Author

• Pharren Miller, University of California - Los Angeles