Abolition and Social Work: Possibilities, Paradox and Praxis

The purpose of this roundtable is to bring together the editors and contributors of a forthcoming book titled Abolition and Social Work, Possibilities, Paradox, and Praxis (Haymarket Press) to be released spring 2024; to engage in a critical conversation about the future of bringing abolitionist principles and politics to social work theory and practice. Since the summer 2020 mass uprisings in response to the murders of George Floyd and Briana Taylor, conversations about the role of abolition in social work began to ramp up in public, academic and professional social work discourse and practice . As a political vision and framework for those working directly to challenge the prison industrial complex (PIC), abolition has become a resonant and transformative approach for many working for justice and human flourishing. This has been particularly true for the field of social work, a profession that has been intimately tied to and often complicit in the building and sustaining of the carceral state.

As Mariame Kaba has taught so many of us, abolitionist theory and praxis are powerful in part because they demand that we prefigure the world in which we want to live. Much of social work is caught in the limitations of today's social and political possibilities, forgoing the work of imagining the social work towards which we should aspire. The possibilities of making social work the work of abolition lie not only in developing solidarity against the PIC but also in working toward the realization of a more just society and a more just social work.

Yet, given social works proximity to the carceral state, both the theorizing and praxis of bringing abolitionist principles to social work is full of paradoxes. How can social workers participate in the dismantling of the PIC while also supporting those caught in its grips? How might social work disentangle its relationship to the carceral state? What are abolitionist approaches to the social welfare state? How do social workers maintain a liberatory horizon while navigating the realities of carceral social work today? In addition to naming the social work we seek, this roundtable aspires to get closer to the paradoxes and tensions of building an abolitionist social work. Finally, the discussants will provide concrete illustrations of abolitionist social work praxis, offering participants generative examples, as well as lessons, challenges and insights into developing on the ground work. From efforts to dismantle the carceral state, to liberatory work in and around the carceral state, to developing mutual aid and transformative justice practices outside of the state, the examples of abolitionist social work help to demystify the work of moving from theory to praxis.