The Scarlet "A" of Criminology and Criminal Justice: Abolition, Positionality, and Pedagogy

• In Event: Abolitionism and Carcerality: Reflections, Perspectives, and Approaches

Abstract

Contemporary conversations surrounding the carceral system and its apparatuses, such as the police, have further exposed the mechanisms through which certain bodies, epistemologies, and spaces reflect systematic displacements and erasures. As such, concerned citizens, activists, and scholars (none of which are mutually exclusive) have called for substantial changes to and the complete abolishment of the carceral system, the latter of which is often characterized as a more extreme option. Others have expanded these notions towards an imaginative project, rooted in actionable steps, that pushes towards “the abolition of a society that could have prisons” (Moton and Herney, 200: 114). Yet, despite these complexes diverging yet interlocking perspectives, the concept abolition often remains relegated to the realms of legalized slavery and Lincoln’s 13th Amendment in American criminology and criminal justice educational contexts. For example, the little engagement with abolition in these fields, both of which are inextricable linked the carceral system and violence against communities that have been marginalized, has marked abolition as the “scarlet A” of criminology and criminal justice. Drawing from abolitionist, queer, educational, and other diverse bodies of literature, and explored through the personal experiences of a Black queer woman within criminology and criminal justice, this work discusses how my personal definitions of abolition have changed throughout educational, social, and professional contexts. In doing so, I interrogate the question, “What does it mean for a Black queer and female criminologist to be within a discipline that is inextricably intertwined with, and benefits from, the carceral system?”

Author

• Alessandra Early, John Jay College