Interrogating Carceral Logics with Abolition Geography: A Place-Based Case Study Approach in Social Work and Social Policy Education

Background and Purpose: The logics of punishment and surveillance permeate many aspects of society in the United States, from the rules and regulations structuring institutions, to the construction of public space, to how we organize our relationships with each other. This paper examines the use of place-based case studies in social work and social policy education to interrogate carceral and punitive logics that appear in students’ lives and within their immediate environments. It outlines the dimensions of carceral practices, policies, interventions, or logics (PPILs) that appear across sectors where social work and social policy practitioners operate.

Methods: Drawing on Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s conceptualization of Carceral and Abolition Geographies, this paper outlines the components of place-based case studies that invite social work, social policy, education, criminology, and nursing students to interrogate a carceral PPIL that operates within their immediate environment, including their neighborhoods, educational contexts, and workplaces. Additionally, the paper draws on case study methodology and reflexive thematic analysis to identify and discuss the commonalities of carceral PPILs across various sectors, including education, healthcare and reproductive justice, housing, and third places where young people live and play.

Results: In form, place-based case studies situate carceral PPILs within their historical and contemporary manifestations; demonstrate how carceral PPIL operates within a given geographical context; delineate the implications of the carceral PPIL on local communities, especially vulnerable and marginalized people; and draw on key concepts from historical and contemporary abolitionist thought to propose alternative responses to the carceral PPILs and to actively imagine abolitionist horizons. Further, in content, analyses of the case studies across sectors suggests that carceral PPILs in the United States are highly classed and racialized. Carceral PPILs also operate in gendered ways, policing, sorting, and punishing people divergently based on perceptions of their gender identities. In turn, disrupting carceral PPILs requires attending to both the negative and positive programs of abolition – in other words, both through the dismantling of carceral systems and through the prefiguration and construction of institutions and relations that secure peoples’ basic needs and promote human flourishing.

Conclusions and Implications: This paper demonstrates the pedagogical utility of place-based case studies that are coupled with instruction on abolition geography and abolitionist lineages, theories, and praxis more broadly. Abolitionist pedagogical interventions of this type may contribute to social work and social policy students’ ability to identify, challenge, and subvert the implicit carceral logics that operate within their sites of learning and practice.