Davis and Colleagues Publish Anti-Carceral Propositions Journal Article

For a forthcoming special issue on empowering systems-impacted students (edited by Drs. Adrian Huerta and Julissa Muñiz), CARL Director Dr. Charles H.F. Davis III, Dr. Erin S. Corbett and Maurice Blackwell of Second Chance Educational Alliance collaborated to offer alternative approaches for postsecondary educators to support currently and formerly incarcerated college students. Their article, entitled “Abolitionist Considerations and Anti-Carceral Propositions for the Carceral University” (online version), was recently published via Open Access in Theory Into Practice.

ABSTRACT

The extant higher education literature on the relationship between the university and the carceral system primarily focuses on the role of postsecondary institutions and curricula in the lives of currently and formerly incarcerated people. Despite this focus, the ways the university itself is an apparatus that furthers systematic surveillance, criminalization, coercive control, and punishment has remained largely unexamined. The purpose of this article is to discuss the contours of postsecondary educational access and opportunity for systems-impacted students, as well as the pathologizing and carceral logics by which formal prison education programs and student support initiatives are developed and actively perpetuated. Engaging at this level of understanding will allow postsecondary educators and administrators to understand critical sites and anti-carceral approaches with which colleges and universities engage systems-impacted students.