Carceral Pedagogies: Softening Carcerality and the Call for Abolition

• In Event: Civic Engagement and Corridors of Struggle and Meaning Across Domains

Abstract

Education and incarceration are linked through focusing on how social interactions and contexts of public schools are replicating practices found in prisons. Schooling in youth prisons is often left out of education research, though these types of education spaces have existed throughout American history and have experienced deep racial and gendered inequities. The lack of attention has limited the ways teaching in youth prisons can be examined for its challenges and supports of multiply-marginalized disabled girls of color (Annamma, 2018). This study explores the contexts, pedagogies, and impacts in one maximum-security youth prison as attempts to soften carcerality. Centering the girls’ words in classes, interviews, and focus groups, we explore attempts and impacts of softening carcerality.

Authors

• Subini Ancy Annamma, Stanford University

• Annie Le, Stanford University

• Brian Cabral, Stanford University

• Brianna Marche' Harvey, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jennifer M. Wilmot, The University of Kansas