Roundtable: Abolition in Action: Alternatives to Calling the Police

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract/Description

Real victory for racial and social justice means engaging the culture of surveillance, policing, and control. The conversation of police abolition is integral to the penal abolition framework. But what exactly does such abolition in action, i.e. abolition of police, mean? Analyzing the history of policing as an idea and a practice that reproduces the worst of white supremacy, racism and class/gender/etc. oppression is intuitive, but how do we reconcile police abolition alongside the reality of the ubiquity of human transgression and harm making? In this roundtable we take on these problems in the abstract, as well as in the specificity of asking, “What are the alternatives to calling the police?”

Sub Unit

• Area XI. Roundtables

Chair

• Michael J. Coyle, California State University, Chico

Discussants

• Luis A. Fernandez, Northern Arizona University

• Dawn Moore, Carleton University

• Hal Pepinsky, Indiana University Bloomington

• Alex S. Vitale, Brooklyn College

• Kevin Walby, University of Winnipeg