Penal Abolition – Building Ideas and Practices

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

The purpose of this Roundtable is to facilitate discussion and contact between those interested in the ideas and practices of penal abolition. The session launches with four presentations on key penal abolition concepts, and moves into a discussion by all those present about how to shift the intellectual and practice-centered life of "criminology" and "criminal justice" from the centuries old notion of "criminal justice reform" (and the now aging critical examinations of status quo criminological theory and practice), to that which moves beyond the penal project. Thus, the goal of this roundtable is to identify penal abolition as a distinct field of ideas and activities that travels beyond the profession of critiquing "criminology" and "criminal justice," and to strategize about creating a lasting space for penal abolition.

Sub Unit

• Area VIII: Roundtables

Individual Presentations

• Penal Abolition, Naiveté, and the Ideologies of “Crime” and “Criminology” - Michael J. Coyle, California State University, Chico

• Penal Abolition: Working to Distinguish the Fear of Difference - Rachel Herzing, Critical Resistance

• Reflections on the Fifteenth International Conference on Penal Abolition: On Possibilities and Pitfalls - Justin Piche, University of Ottawa

• Penal Abolition as Severing the Threads of Penality - Viviane Saleh-Hanna, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth