Examining our role as abolitionist educators: Practicing hope in a discipline dependent on maintaining the carceral status quo

• In Event: Consuming Carcerality: The Ethics, Tourism, and Pop Cultural Commodification of Carceral Spaces

Abstract

Abolitionist educators may grapple with the cognitive dissonance produced by ethical conflicts arising in their work within academic institutions with well-established ties to the Prison-Industrial Complex (PIC). This is especially likely for those within criminal justice departments whose mission and ideological underpinnings often clash with abolitionist principles. Additionally, we recognize that our careers may be contingent upon maintaining a carceral State, even as we discuss the need to dismantle that very system in our classrooms and in our scholarship. In other words, we also consume carcerality. Drawing on our own experiences, this paper critically reflects and analyzes how abolitionist educators navigate the tension between their values and their roles within an institution that directly and indirectly supports carcerality and State violence. We also discuss strategies to reconcile this dissonance, such as using critical pedagogies that challenge conventional narratives around policing and punishment while centering abolitionist alternatives and transformative justice. The presence of abolitionist educators within the Academy can provide opportunities to shift universities from sites that maintain the PIC to sites of resistance by fostering critical discourse and empowering students with the analytical tools to imagine a future that rejects carcerality. Moreover, we call for the need to practice hope.

Authors

• Alison Cox, East Carolina University

• Ashley Kilmer, Towson University

• Nicole McKenna, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

• Alessandra Early, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Hayley Jackey, Old Dominion University