Teaching Abolition: Imagining a World without Prisons as a Means of Resisting the Carceral State

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

In California and across the U.S., mass incarceration has reflected the inequities embedded within criminalization/punishment. While there are pressure points for reform, it is challenging to discuss the abolition of prisons as a possibility. Yet, whether teaching on the inside or the outside of the criminal legal processing system, until we can begin to shift our addiction to policing and punishment, we cannot begin building possibilities for community accountability and a world without prisons. Among the participants on this roundtable are researchers and activists who have worked for many years to expose the fault line in our dependence on incarceration and doubt that we can really make it better for the people who are so inscribed within it. Can educators who act both within the polity and as activists within prison construct opportunities for co-constructing with students and others a justice that builds upon our whole selves as both accountable and redeemable? Can we re-imagine fundamental justice that incorporates both a theoretical and authentic emancipation? We will broaden the anti-oppression discussion for improving society that requires rethinking how prisons function. We will share curricula, exercises, and experiences in the classroom and in the prison for consideration of these ideas.

Sub Unit

• Area VIII: Roundtables

Individual Presentations

• Teaching abolition: Imagining a world without prisons as a means of resisting the carceral state - Patricia O'Brien, University of Illinois at Chicago; Pat Carlen, Leicester University; Colleen Marie Hackett, University of Colorado; Rebecca Maniglia, Northern Arizona University; Susan F. Sharp, University of Oklahoma; Jacqui Young, John Jay College of Criminal Justice