The Troubled Child: Mediations on Dismantling Carceral State Education

• In Event: Carceral State Education as Violence, Trauma, and Resistance

Abstract

A key facet of our racialized prison nation are laws that profess to protect the child. A matrix of punitive systems that do not advance public safety (e.g., drug-free school zones, anti-loitering ordinances) naturalize policing and punishment with false promise of child protection, while disproportionately criminalizing young people. Through outlining ableist, racialized, and heteropatriarchal foundations of child and providing examples of how the rhetorical clout of child is deployed to strengthen laws that augment carcerality, this research suggests dismantling carceral state education requires a rigorous theorization of the artifact of child.

Presenter

• Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University