“At Any Given Point in Your Life, You Can Be Wrong About Everything”: Queer and Trans Perspectives, Community Care, and the Abolitionist Imagination

• In Event: Abolition and Queer Justice: Queer Criminalization and Criminology’s Investments in the Police

Abstract

Using qualitative data from interviews with 42 LGBTQIA+ people, this chapter investigates the following two questions: 1) How do queer and trans people begin engaging with police and/or prison abolition? and 2) What connections do queer and trans people draw between LGBTQIA+ identity and abolitionism? Currently available options for emergency response services were viewed with dissatisfaction, particularly those involving police and the carceral system, which often caused further harm without addressing underlying problems. Some people explored informal crisis response alternatives involving community support, while others suggested possible improvements to formal service provision. Mutual aid and community support initiatives were positioned as part of a broader historical context of grassroots queer and trans care networks, which often arise in response to institutional harm or neglect of marginalized communities. Participants also connected their investment in alternate, non-carceral forms of crisis response through an explicitly queer and trans political lens, noting that exploring and expressing their identities had helped open their minds to abolitionist viewpoints and encouraged them to consider broader definitions of harm, care, safety, and support than those offered by formal institutions.

Author

• Max Osborn, Villanova University